Google Optimization Secrets From The Trenches - Content Exportation

Google Optimization Secrets From The Trenches - Content Exportation

This one is rapidly becoming a huge deal with Google. The Google guidelines state that "If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system can export your content so that search engine spiders can crawl your site."

What the guideline is talking about is RSS. Google is rapidly getting to the point, and may get there a lot sooner than you might think, that their spider won't even look at the page itself, but will instead focus on the RSS and OPML files. These two files are considered "content exporters." Now we've already talked about the OPML file. If you want some information on RSS, there is an excellent article (of course I think it was excellent, I wrote it) right here on SEO Chat. You can read all about why RSS is important at this link: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Yahoo-Optimization-Help/An-Insiders-Secret-To-Seriously-High-Rankings-With-Yahoo/.


The Wrap Up

Google, always one of the front runners, has reached the point that it is very "meta data" savvy. In other words, this engine can make use of OPML files and RSS files. It can then compare those files to your site's actual content to make its decision making process that much more accurate when a search is performed. This means that sites that actually have RSS and OPML files are automatically ranked better than those sites which do not have them. Further, those sites which are laid out in a manner similar to their OPML files (in other words the content of the page follows a logical heirarchical order) will be ranked higher still.

And best of all, sites that follow design guidelines like that are easier to follow, read, and understand by visitors to your site, which will mean people are more likely to come back. And that's the best benefit of all.


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