Google Sitemaps to help indexing
June 3, 2008 | Pay Per Click, SEO
Today myself and my head of search Tim were meeting with one of our clients, discussing the virtues of having a Google site map.
Traditionally, the search engines find the pages on your website by following the links from one page to another, until the search engines finds all the pages and adds them to its index. This can sometimes be a bit hit and miss, especially if the links on the site have not been created correctly. In fact, incorrect link structure and implementation can stop indexing of anything more than the front page.
A solution to this is creating an xml site map which you submit to the search engines. A sitemap is basically a list of all the pages on the site, which the search engines can then read and check. It’s a good way of getting the pages indexed.
One of the checks you can run on your own site to see how well it is indexed is by typing the following search into Google
Site:www.yourwebaddress.com
This will give you the pages within your site which have been indexed.
SEO - SEM - What an earth are they?!
May 14, 2008 | Pay Per Click, SEO
Today I was speaking for a Vistage group, which is a group of business owners who meet monthly with a facilitator/mentor to hear a leading speaker and share issues they are facing in their business. Today I was a groups speaker.
One of the members asked me to explain the difference between SEO and SEM
SEO stands for Search engine optimisation. SEM stands for Search engine marketing.
SEO is the process of raising a website up the natural listings of Google or any other search engine. This is commonly the results on the left hand side. This optimisation occurs through a process of editing the writing of the site, the coding of the site and generating incoming links into the site.
SEM is the process of paying for adverts which appear on the search engines, in Google’s case, adwords which show up on the right hand side.
Each have their own merits, and I believe for a successful campaign, both are needed.
