A Simple White Hat Technique To Get Indexed By Google

Everybody knows that getting indexed in Google is getting more and more difficult each day and every body is looking for that edge over the competition.

Most "white hat" SEO's frown upon methods like cloaking, blog and ping and other such "black hat" techniques and never had any special technique that they could use to help get their pages indexed better.

Well, presenting Google Sitemaps, Googles latest offering which is still in the beta stage, and which won't make the purists frown.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/stats

Google sitemaps is a service that allows webmasters to define how often their sites' content is going to change, which is supposed to give Google a better idea of what pages to index.

By placing a specially formatted XML file on your web server, you inform Google of whenever your pages change, and then the googlebot crawls the updated pages making the necessary updates to its database.

Google has provided the format your xml file has to be in at https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/protocol.html

An interesting point is that the xml file has 2 tags, changefreq and priority with which you can also indicate how important each page is, and how frequently the page changes.

The valid values for changefreq are "always", "hourly", "daily", "weekly", "monthly", "yearly" and "never" and similarly the priority can vary from 0.0 to 1.0, where 0.0 identifies the lowest priority page(s) on your site and 1.0 identifies the highest priority page(s) on your site.

Once you have the xml file in place on your server, you need to inform Google about it by opening this URL in your browser

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=URL

where the URL part in the above URL should be the URL-encoded location of your Sitemaps xml file.

Now Google has provided an open source script that will automatically generate the xml file for you. The only drawback being its in a scripting language called Python.

There are however several Free Third Party scripts and tools available.

1)Softplus GSiteCrawler: This is a windows software and is extremely easy to use.It has been coded in Visual Basic 6.0.

http://johannesmueller.com/gs/

2)SiteMaps Pal: This is a online service that generates the sitemap for you.It has a limit of 1000 links. So if you web site has more than 1000 links, this won't work for you.

http://www.sitemapspal.com/

3)Google Sitemap Generator: This is another free online sitemap creator.This service lets you crawl sites 3 levels deep and limits the number of links to 400.

http://www.my-google-sitemap.com/

4)phpSitemapNG from enarion: This is a php script that you need to upload to the root of your web site and the script generates the sitemap file on the server.

It also lets you submit the sitemap to Google by clicking a link.

The drawback of this script is that you will need to upload it to each of your sites and it also doesn't recognize subdomains.

http://enarion.net/google/

5)Google Sitemap Generator for Dreamweaver: This dreamweaver extension by George Petrov lets you quickly create Google Sitemaps for your dreamweaver sites.

http://www.dmxzone.com/ShowDetail.asp?NewsId=10538

6)Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress: Here is a plugin for wordpress users

http://www.arnebrachhold.de/2005/06/05/google-sitemaps-generator- v2-final

7)SecretSpider generator: This is a paid software priced at $97. Its advantages are that it also lets you gzip the xml file thereby making it smaller in size.

Secret Spider generator

So, go ahead and make your website more Google-friendly.

About The Author
Satyajeet Hattangadi is the Owner of Novasoft Inc
http://www.novasoft-inc.com/products.asp, creators of Adsense Cloaker http://www.adsensecloaker.com, a unique php script that hides your adsense ads from the robots and helps prevent de-indexing by yahoo.

This article may be reprinted provided the resource box is kept intact, with the active links included.

In The News:

pen paper and inkwell


cat break through


The Power of Topic Specific Search

What are Topical Search Engines?Simply put, topical search engines are... Read More

Link Popularity --- Its Role and Importance In Getting Top Search Engine Rankings

Introduction"Link Popularity" ? these words may have caught your attention... Read More

SEO for CEOs ? Search Engine Optimization Unmasked for CEOs

If you're like most other CEOs, the term "search engine... Read More

MLM and SEO - Bad Business! No Business!

MLM has been around way before the Internet. It is... Read More

From Corpora to Matching

Making effective use of the Internet is increasingly about creating... Read More

Utilizing Popular Directories as Free Link Sources

If you're a webmaster, you've probably spent almost as much... Read More

The Secret To Getting Indexed In Yahoo

Getting indexed in Yahoo has become very difficult in the... Read More

Optimizing Your Website

Search Engine Optimization, optimizing your website for it to be... Read More

Beat Google?s Dampening Link Filter with SEO Articles

Most Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts agree that links back... Read More

Search Engine Optimization - A Do-It-Yourself Guide for the Small Business Owner

So your company has a website ? an important step... Read More

Search Engine Optimization Explained

Search Engine Listing And OptimizationIn the world of website marketing,... Read More

Introduction to Google Page Rank (PR)

For anyone looking to enhance their Google Page Rank (PR)... Read More

2 Lesser Known Ways to Brainstorm for Internet Home Business Keywords

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) doctrine states that you should always... Read More

The Myth of Rankings - Beyond Search Engine Optimization

What follows is a condensed version of a conversation that... Read More

Have You Been Dropped By Yahoo?

Yahoo has fairly recently updated its guidelines. You can read... Read More

Do You Have a Bad SEO Company, or Are You Just a Bad Client?

I admit it, our SEO services are pretty bad.Speaking of... Read More

A Simple White Hat Technique To Get Indexed By Google

Everybody knows that getting indexed in Google is getting more... Read More

How to Get One Way Backlinks

Don't be fooled into believing that all backlinks are created... Read More

Twelve Steps to Higher Search Engine Placement

Recent studies suggest that more than 80% of new visitors... Read More

Non-Reciprocal Link Building For Higher Search Engine Positioning

Non-Reciprocal Link Building For Higher Search Engine Positioning By Dave... Read More

Whats with the Competition? Ever Heard of Cooperation?

I attended the SES Expo in San Jose, CA the... Read More

SEO Expert Guide - Paid Site Promotion (Marketing) (part 7/10)

In parts 1 - 6 you learnt how to develop... Read More

Writing SEO Copy ? 8 Steps to Success

We all know that the lion's share of web traffic... Read More

Keywords ? Key For All Doors

Keyword research is certainly the most important phase in Search... Read More

The 7 Best Stealth Techniques to Improve Your Google Rankings

Stealth as in Spying. But Knowing What your Top Competitors... Read More

How to Make Better Use of Web Site Page Titles and META Data

We got down to the basics with web site page... Read More

5 Simple Steps to Great Search Engine Rankings

Having your website rank well in the major search engines... Read More

Keyword Optimization - How To Achieve It

The most important thing you can do for your business... Read More

The Search Engine Secret That Is No Secret At All

It's common knowledge - we all know that it is... Read More

Build Link Popularity The Smart Way

A Brief Introduction To Link PopularityAs webmasters research various ways... Read More

How to Avoid Being Dropped by the Search Engines

For websites, one of the most important things in their... Read More

Why Top Search Engine Placements Never Move?

#1 question when it comes to web advertising is how... Read More

Optimizing Online Catalog Copy for the Search Engines

It only makes sense. You have an e-commerce catalog site.... Read More