What is an XML Sitemap?

An XML sitemap is an XML document which contains a list of all of the pages (or at least the one’s you would like to be indexed!) on a website.

Your XML sitemap should look something like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd" xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"> <url>
<loc>http://www.rutley.co.uk/</loc>
<lastmod>2010-12-07T13:39:54+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.rutley.co.uk/blog/misc/footfeed-send-an-email-ccing-all-footfeed-beta-testers</loc>
<lastmod>2010-12-07T13:39:54+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
...
</urlset>


What is the purpose of an XML sitemap?

Providing an XML sitemap allows you to inform search engines of the location of content on your website. Search engines usually spider your website in order to find new content/pages and can easily miss new content.

How do I get an XML sitemap?

If your site has been built on a CMS you may be able to install a plugin/extension/module which will automatically generate an XML sitemap for your website when you add new content. For WordPress Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin will allow you to generate an XML sitemap for your website (amongst other things).

If your website has not been built on a CMS or the process of installing a plugin is too costly/time consuming (or a plugin doesn’t exist) then you can generate an XML sitemap using a tool such as Xenu Link Sleuth.

Ok, now I have an XML sitemap, what next?

Now you have an XML sitemap you need to upload it to your website, the most common place to place it is on /sitemap.xml (e.g. http://www.rutley.co.uk/sitemap.xml). Once you’ve done this you’ll want to tell Google (and the other search engines) about your new XML sitemap – to do this add the sitemap protocol to your robots.txt file (click the link for instructions).

Sitemap: http://www.rutley.co.uk/sitemap.xml

And submit the sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Hi. We are making a number of improvements and upgrades to Footfeed over the next several months and as a registered member of our community, we would appreciate getting your thoughts on how we can make it better by completing our short survey. We don’t have money or gift cards to bribe you with. Just our appreciation and gratitude, which is way more valuable!

Here is a link to the survey:

http://bit.ly/g5ZaB6

Thanks for your help!

The email sparked a number of complaints from fellow Footfeed beta testers, one of them pointing out the breach in the Footfeed privacy policy:

Information sharing

In addition to the uses noted above, Footfeed only shares personal information with other companies or individuals outside of Footfeed in the following limited circumstances:

We have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.

We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against imminent harm to the rights, property or safety of Footfeed, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.

If Footfeed becomes involved in a merger, acquisition, or any form of sale of some or all of its assets, we will provide notice before personal information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

Please contact us at the address below for any additional questions about the management or use of personal data.

To date we have not received an apology from Footfeed regarding this break in their privacy policy.

Update [07/12/2010 @ 00:28]: Just had a message from Footfeed on Twitter informing me that “Footfeed did not cc: all beta testers. The issue occurred with exactly 100 users, not the other 9,200 users”, sorry for that. Still no response on the email thread/apology.

When you mouse over a search result with a magnifying glass icon next to it a preview appears to the right of the result.

What do you think?

“Successful search marketing today is all about collaboration: with clients to make sure that their websites are written and organized in a way that search engines understand; with clients’ customers to make sure engagement is happening at all levels; and with other marketing channels to get the best out of every penny spent. The winning campaign here used solid SEO techniques, social media and tactical PPC to achieve that collaboration with great success.”

Read more on the PushON blog.

1. Citations – Google uses citations for Local Business Listings in the same way it uses Inbound Links for its local ranking algorithms. The more citations you have the higher probability you have to rank well in Google Local Business. Foursquare allows you to add your address and phone number to your listing which is enough to qualify as a citation for this purpose. Tom Critchlow has some awesome information about Google Local here.
2. Link Building – You can leave tips on venue pages. Not many people have noticed that when you leave a tip you have the option to specify a link. These links are followed. For an example of these links take a look at my comment on the PushON Foursquare listing.
3. Bing Maps – Bing recently announced that they’re going to be including Foursquare data in their maps. There is no reason why Google and other mapping website won’t start doing it.

Got another reason? Let me know!

The main reason I find Foursquare so interesting is that you can view all of your check in history on Google Earth. This feature is not promoted as well as it should be by Foursquare, so this is how you do it.

1. Log into your Foursquare account
2. Select the “History” tab from the horizontal navigation menu
3. Select the RSS icon on the right-hand side of the page
4. Select the KML feed link from the list of feed formats

The KML file should download and allow you to view your history in Google Earth.

You can download Google Earth from here.

Sam Rutley on Foursquare

So what are the options?

Google Chrome

Google Chrome was released by Google in September, 2008. Chrome was built from the ground-up making it one of the fastest and most reliable web browsers out there. Recently Google added extensions which makes Google Chrome a viable alternative to Firefox.
Download Google Chrome

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox was released by the Mozilla Foundation in November, 2004. Firefox has evolved tremendously since its launch in 2004 and has by far the largest number of extensions of any modern web browser.
Download Mozilla Firefox

How to find an SEO company

• Search for “SEO + Your Town/City” (for example “SEO Manchester“) and look at the highest ranking SEO companies. Ignore the paid advertising along the top and right-hand side of the page and also ignore any Google Local Listing/Google News items that appear.
• Get a recommendation from other business owners. If you know someone who has worked with a search marketing company ask them about their experience using that particular agency.

Questions to ask a potential SEO company

• “Can I be number one on the Google for some competitive term? By some unrealistic period of time” – if the answer is yes steer clear of them. Many cowboy agencies claim they can get you to number one for X terms but they will actually mean through pay-per-click advertising.
• “How much will you charge?” – if the answer is less than a few hundred pounds per month avoid them.
• “How do you go about building links to my website?” – if the answer mentions any of the following avoid them; buying links, link farms, content networks, bulk directory submissions, link exchanges.

Choosing an SEO company is hard and you may not get it right the first time so make sure you ask the above questions, keep asking what you’re getting for your money each month and monitor the results closely.

Objective: Force users to define specific custom fields on pages using custom templates and display them as separate required fields in the page editor.

How it would work: As the developer you simply put add the required variables to the custom template file when you declare the template’s name. Something like:-

<?php
/*
Template Name: Snarfer
Requires: page-subheading | Page Subheading
Requires: some-image-for-popup | Popup Image
*/
?>

These fields would then be displayed in the page editor and the user would be unable to publish the page unless the custom field has been entered.

Anyone know if this has already been done? If not, what do you think?

However now they include the users real name as well as their username.

This is another opportunity great for both brands and people to own more of the SERPs for their names.