Website Design 101 - How to Build a Sitemap

What is the biggest mistake anyone planning a website creation or redesign could make?

Answer: Not thoroughly planning out your website beforehand is an expensive disaster waiting to happen, even when you are using great CMS technology.

A sitemap is a structured list of all pages within a website. It is the table of contents for your web presence and is crucial both during the planning phase of a website and for the end user experience. The sitemap foundation becomes the page navigation that dictates the user experience. If your content is not organized in a clear and standardized way, the user will leave your site frustrated and uninterested in your brand.

Often, a sitemap is completely separate from the look and feel of a business website. So, while the sitemap is a critical starting place to get you thinking about your web project, it doesn't dictate that your site will be "boring". On the flip side, a website that is graphically appealing or full of pizazz may still come off as a smoke and mirrors magic trick if the user does not know what information is available or how to find what they are looking for.

Visualization as an important web design tool.

A sitemap can be viewed in two ways:

1. A list format - this is like a table of contents in a book.

Think text book: the information is grouped by chapter and each chapter has a few subsections. In the web world, we call the chapters and the sections

2. A graphical map format - this is more like a mind map.

Surprising, this can be dangerous. It looks great to present the end user with a visual map of your website, but during the planning phase of a website, it might become too easy to leave areas of your map too vague or to navigate a user through a series of pages without providing them a link to main content.

Users love a new and engaging experience, but from the business world they expect a few constants:

• An About Us page: This should always be near a top-level page if not a superpage. It can be named something more clever as long as users will understand that the page is about your company.
• At least one top-level superpage devoted to your company's products or services.
• A Contact Us page: Many times, users only go to your website to get up-to-date contact information. Remember, younger people are much less likely to use a phone book. Make this easy: don't put up walls around the information your readers are looking for.

XML Sitemap Is an important part of Search Optimization.

Search engines have become increasingly good at recognizing legitimate businesses verses imitators by viewing a website's sitemap and analyzing the content of each page. A well-structured site means that when a user searches for your company name, or related products and services in your area in order to buy and submitting orders for a specific product, your website is more likely to rank highly.

In fact, depending on your market, your Homepage, About Us, and Contact Us might all be listed in a search engine result so that users have one-click access to these key pages.

Should a sitemap be created just once?

Sitemaps are crucial when planning a website, but they do not have to be set in stone. One important aspect of a content management system is the ability to grow your website over time. This means that as a company expands and adds a service or adds a second type of service or product, corresponding pages can easily be added to the website and and the content modified appropriately:

• Home
• About Us
Our History
• Our Staff
• Our Services

• Service A
• Type I
• Type II

• Service B
• Service C
• Get A Quote

• Submit Your Order
• Latest News
• Contact Us

If a site has been structured correctly, search engines will pick-up on the addition and re-index your site accordingly. One last important step in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the existence of a properly formatted.XML sitemap that lives off-menu in the root directory of your website hosting server.

It is a complicated array of URL's and priorities, where super pages are given top priority and blog posts are given lower priority, which tells search engines to list your Homepage, About Us, and Contact Us pages first in their search listings.

Because this is one thing all the major search engines agree upon, there is a standard protocol for generating and submitting these links, so there are several programs that can automatically update and submit a properly formatted XML sitemap.

A Few Simple Sitemap Tips

• When building a sitemap, start with a structure that is unlikely to change, but that will allow room for growth.
• Do not get in the habit of changing top-level pages, as Search Engines will take note and assume your content is unreliable and rank your website - and thus your digital presence - poorly.
• The sitemap can contain sections, for example, adding a top-level page call Blog or Recent News is understood as meaning that articles will be posted and displayed in that section.
• Every user experiences your site differently. Some may like your menu navigation and the way it reflects the organization of your content; however some people may prefer a simple organized list posted somewhere off-menu (see resource box)

Richard Royal is Web Developer for Steele Agency, Inc based in Rome, Georgia.

Richard is a Roman native and Berry College Physics graduate who is applying his software engineering skills at Steele Agency. He provides the ability to develop dynamic web pages and applications, and is highly experienced with Linux based operating systems and a wide range of computer programming languages and platforms.

Although he is well educated in complex problem solving and mathematical analysis, and currently finishing a second degree in Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, he considers much of his technical expertise to stem from his hobbies such as building amateur electronics, star gazing, and studying old Star Trek episodes.

XML sitemap: http://www.steele-agency.com/sitemap.xml
Simple off-menu sitemap: http://www.steele-agency.com/about-us/sitemap/

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How to Optimize Your Website

When you have a website that you are using for a business it is important for that site to be found within the search engines. It can be difficult to compete with so many other websites on the internet so optimizing your website in order for it to get brought to the top of the search results is a necessity. You may be wondering how, exactly, does that task get accomplished. It does not have to be complicated, but knowing a little bit of html is required.

When viewing the html code of your website it looks like a bunch of mumbo jumbo at first, but when you learn what the different symbols stand for it makes it a lot easier. All the tags start with

<tag> and end with </tag> So, for the title of your website it would look like this <title>Title Goes Here</title> When choosing your title you want it to have the keywords you want to optimize your website for. Choose keywords that are longer and not too competitive.

You can use tools like Overture or Word Tracker to choose your keywords. These tools will tell you how competitive your chosen keywords are and how many times they are searched for each month. Take the keywords you chose and place them in the title, h1, h2, alt, and meta keyword tags. Sprinkle those keywords throughout the body of your website making sure they are at the beginning and end.

Try to keep the menu on the right side of the page. Search engines read a website from the right down, center down then left down. You want the majority of your keywords in the body of the website not the menu, Keep the density of your keywords between 2%-6% for maximum benefit. You can check this with a keyword density tool on the web. Just do a search and it will come up.

The alt attributes are within the image tag. When you put a keyword within these attributes it will show on the webpage when the cursor is hovering over that image. Using your keywords in some of the text links on your website will also help the optimization of your website.

Some basic html knowledge is needed when optimizing a website but there are plenty of places on the internet where you can learn the basics. Doing the things described in this article will give you the best chance of getting to the top of the search engines. This helps bring targeted visitors to your website and eventually sales for your business.

When you get the hang of all this you can add other keywords to your site and start ranking high in the search engines for those terms as well. It takes time to learn and it takes time to rank highly for your chosen keywords but it is possible to do without having to be too difficult.

Tara Martindale specializes in helping people find the best work at home business opportunities available. Visit Tara's Work at Home Business Opportunities site for details.

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How to Get Backlinks Using Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com, Delicious and Sphinn.com allow marketers or site owners, like you, to place bookmarks of your favorite sites on them, including your own sites, and it's all free. They've been known as one of the fastest ways to get a blog post ranked on the first pages of the top search engines, including Google. Imagine, with social bookmarking sites, you'll get backlinks to your website easily and have your site sitting on the first page of Google within just a few hours or so.

Basically, here's what's required of you: you sign up with your email and desired user name. Once you've signed up, you'll have an email sent to you (to the email address you provided) requesting that you verify that the information you provided is correct. Click on the link provided in the email, and you're ready to go. Remember, though, you'll have to do this for all of the major bookmarking sites to get numerous backlinks pointing to your website.

By now you should have signed up with many different bookmarking sites and are ready to get going. If your site is a Wordpress blog or similar, install a social bookmarking plugin like ShareIt or OnlyWire's Auto Posting Plugin. I recommend the latter as this will automatically post your new blog posts to the major social bookmarking sites for you.

If using the ShareIt plugin, go to your site and choose a post you want to get backlinks to. You should see a button or link that says "Share It" at the end of the post, click on it and you'll see a list of all the social bookmarking sites available. Then, visit each one and post a short sentence describing your post. Remember to insert your keywords and website URL so as to get the backlinks you're working for. Click the submit button once you feel happy enough about it, and you should get the backlinks pointing back to your website almost immediately.

If your site isn't a blog, you can still use this method to get backlinks, except that you'll find it more tedious. This means you'll either have to use social bookmarking software or use a site like socialmarker.com. Regardless, whether you choose to use this or the plugins described earlier, you can still rank high on the first pages of search engines building backlinks via social bookmarking.

Get Backlinks from high PR sites without social bookmarking or any of the other usual tedious tasks. For more internet marketing tips and resources, visit Alan Mater's Work From Home Resources blog.

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