Google Optimization Secrets From The Trenches - The Site Map

Google Optimization Secrets From The Trenches - The Site Map

Another item that Google recommends is the creation of a site map. Well, guess what? By making the site map a hierarchical representation, complete with H1 and H2 tags (and an OPML file of its own), you can let Google know the “parent/child” relationships from one page to the next.

In other words, not only should each page’s content be laid out in a hierarchical manner, your entire site should be laid out in a hierarchical manner as well. This will help Google to understand how one part of your site relates to other parts … and drive every single page of your site higher in Google’s rankings.

Not meaning to beat a dead horse here, but by also giving your site map page an OPML file, you will allow Google to utilize the additional information, making your site more searchable by the Google spider than is otherwise possible.


Going Dynamic

I personally am a big fan of content management systems. I am also very against content management systems such as PHPNuke or PHP Website. If you check the Google site on its recommendations, it says, “If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a '?' character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them small.”

Most content management systems require a ridiculous number of parameters and they don’t load fast enough to make them easily “spiderable.”

You see, the search engine spiders only allow a page a certain amount of time to load before simply moving on. A page that takes too long to load won’t be spidered as often and therefore won’t show up as high as it could in search results.

You can get the beginnings of an excellent CMS system that loads blazingly fast and doesn’t need more than two parameters ever at this site: http://www.wolfdatasystems.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6.

That link will give you the "foundation" for the code that drives the CMS system that runs my own site over at http://www.wolfdatasystems.com. If you would like that code, including the stuff you need to create the appropriate tables, just send me an email and I'll send it to you (free of course).


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