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Google Sitemaps' Hidden Secrets - Powerful SEO Tools Revealed! |
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Friday, 03 March 2006 |
Google has had a feature out for some time which allows webmasters to create a
sitemap file to help Google's crawlers find and index content.
It sounds like a great idea. After all, it is much easier to feed the crawler
the content then hope it finds it on it's own.
But is a Google sitemap worthwhile? Is it even necessary? Well, once you
realize the incredibly powerful statistics available to you, you might change
your opinion. After all, would knowing what terms might be driving searches to
your competitors be helpful?
When the Google Sitemap program first started my thought was "That's kinda cool
but what's the real benefit?"
So, I thought I'd try it out and submit sitemaps for a few sites that I own.
When Google Sitemaps first came out it was very difficult to figure out what all
the entries meant as well as how to actually create the sitemap.
Sure, it was XML based, and I could plainly see what they expected but when you
have a large site, how do you go about creating this?
Then Google came out with a sitemap generator which is a program intended to
help you create a sitemap for your site. This does help speed up the process
but unless you are a developer it is a little difficult to implement.
Also, you need access to your server to run the script required to generate the
sitemap. If you are unsure you should check with your web host to see if you
have terminal access to execute Python scripts.
Personally, I've never tried the Google Sitemapper tool but I have used others.
For example, on my personal blog which uses Moveable Type, I found a blog post
which shows How to build a Movable Type Google sitemap template. And I've used
Xenu and an Excel spreadsheet which works great as well.
Now that the sitemap creation is covered, let's get into the question at hand.
Is a Google sitemap really worth the effort?
A few months ago I would have said no, but lately Google has been adding
features that make me think otherwise.
For example, if you've gone through the verification process (which is really
just placing a blank HTML file on the site and having Google find it) and
ensured your 404 errors are properly configured you can get access to a wealth
of additional intel.
One such feature is the "Top Search Queries." This tells you which queries were
used when your pages appeared in the search results but may not have been
clicked on.
In other words, these are actual searcher queries that were performed on Google
where your site may have appeared but not had click-through's.
>From a keyword research point of view, this is a huge advantage to you. By
monitoring your sitemap stats you can easily see some of the terms people are
using and perhaps determine what you need to do to rank higher for those terms
so you too can get the clicks that your competitors are receiving.
If you don't have ready access to log analysis or other stats, the Google
sitemap can also tell you what terms actually drove traffic to your site.
In other words, these were searches performed on Google that actually generated
clicks for your site.
There's also a wealth of other information. For example, "Crawl Stats" shows
you how Googlebot sees your site, errors generated by it, and even a PageRank
distribution chart detailing how well PageRank is distributed.
So, if you are like me and wondering if a Google sitemap is worth it I'd say
yes, it is. The information provided, while mostly technical, can help you
troubleshoot problems as well as provide ideas to help you improve your
positioning.
Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for
http://www.textlinkbrokers.com.
Textlinkbrokers is the trusted leader in building long term rankings through
safe and effective link building. Please provide a link directly to
Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.
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