The Importance of Sitemaps

    According to Sitemaps.org, sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional meta data about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

    Sitemaps serve two major functions:

• To help users navigate your site
• To help search engine crawlers navigate your website

    Moreover, having an updated sitemap on your website helps not only your visitors, but the search engines too. Consider sitemaps to be a unique way to communicate with the search engines and telling them where you'd like them to crawl on your website.

Sitemaps and Search Engines

     Sitemaps have been around for many years now and despite the fact that they are not a novelty, it's only after the search engines adopted them that they have suddenly caught the eye of all good webmasters as part of their search engine optimization strategy. If you simply want to use sitemaps for search engine optimization purposes, then conventional HTML site maps are not for you. For example: Google Sitemaps should be written in XML, which is very different from the regular HTML site maps that are used for website visitors.

     So does this mean that you need to have two sitemaps for your website? The answer is yes. One site map is for Googlebot or the Google spider, while the other is for your visitors. You should also be aware that having two sitemaps is not considered to be duplicate content and this has been made explicitly clear by Google, as it has stated that having two site maps will not lead to any penalty for your website.

Generating and Submitting Sitemaps To Search Engines

    Once you have your website ready with your XML site map, you need to upload your website to your server and then notify Google, through Webmaster Tools, where your sitemap lives . Typically, there are two ways of generating a site map. 

1. You can install a sitemap generator script on your website  
2. You can use an on-line sitemap generation tool to create one

     Though the first option is difficult it offers you more control over the final result. Google Sitemap Generator is a good tool that can be used for generating a site map. Since the tool is coded in Python script, you need to have Python 2.2 version on your web server to run it.

     The second method of generating a site map while being easier doesn't give you much flexibility. Google also suggests some 3rd party Sitemap tools but warns users that it has not tested or verified them. Having created a site map, it's time to upload it to your website and let Google, Yahoo and MSN know about it.

    Our SEO Professionals team at Levonsys performs marketing research, suggest the best search engine marketing channel like SEO, SMO, Google sponsored listings (paid listing) and how to make a SEO friendly website for your online business.

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Email: sales@levonsys.com | Website: www.levonsys.com

Why the 301 Redirect is a must ?

What is 301 redirect?

    301 redirect is the best method to preserve your current search engine rankings when redirecting web pages or a website. The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently". After the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is noted, followed by a space, then followed by the new location or file name. 


                                                 Get robots to the right address

    One of the fundamental elements in search engine optimization is making the indexation of a website as easy as possible. That is why we create the Robots.txt file and the XML sitemap. I think the 301 redirect of the non-www to the www or visa-versa, is on the same level of creating ease for the search engines.

Links to the Right Address 

    There are many who worry about not getting the full link benefit of redirected anchor text links. Doing the redirect can help would-be linkers know which is the proper address to use when linking. Getting the right link from the beginning is still ideal and should prove to be more beneficial.

 

301 redirects are particularly useful in the following circumstances  

• You've moved your site to a new domain, and you want to make the transition as seamless as possible.

• People access your site through several different URLs. If, for example, your home page can be reached in multiple ways - for instance, http://example.com/home, http://home.example.com, or http://www.example.com - it's a good idea to pick one of those URLs as your preferred (canonical) destination, and use 301 redirects to send traffic from the other URLs to your preferred URL. 

• You're merging two websites and want to make sure that links to outdated URLs are redirected to the correct pages.

    At Levonsys we use cutting edge, targeted Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing techniques to maximize relevant traffic to your web site. Our SEO strategies are dynamic and designed to produce long-term results.

 

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Email: sales@levonsys.com | Website: www.levonsys.com