A “site map” is a file on a website that helps you find things on that site. There are two kinds of site maps both of which make your website more usable.

The first is a simple page on your website that lists – usually in outline format – the most important pages on your site. Sometimes a user will have difficulty finding what they are looking for with the normal navigation menus on a page so a site map provides an easy way to scan the titles of all the pages on your site. Also, the links on a site map are easily seen by a search engine so it is another way to ensure they check all of the pages on your website.

Here is what CityCenter’s site map page looks like:

A site map provides an easy way to quickly see the pages on a website

The second type of site map is specifically designed for search engines. It is a simple text file, but it is structured in a particular way, named “sitemap.xml” and contains specific information:

• URL (web address) of the web page
• the date and time that page was last modified
• how often it is usually changed, and
• what you think its relative importance is (compared to other pages on your site)

Here is what one line of a sitemap.xml file looks like:

<url><loc>http://www.citycent.com/about.htm</loc>
<lastmod>2009-06-12T05:37:02+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq><priority>0.50</priority></url>

It’s somewhat readable, but not something you’d really want to type out yourself. Luckily there are lots of online services (many free) and programs that will create a sitemap.xml file for you:

• http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/4
• http://sitemapdoc.com/
• http://www.addme.com/ror-sitemap-generator.htm
• http://gsitecrawler.com/

Some of those services also provide an editor so you can make modifications to the site map. Most often you’ll want to edit the “priority” field. The system works on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 with 1.0 having the highest priority. Setting a page to 1.0 won’t get it a higher ranking with Google, but it will tell the search engine viewing your site that that page is more important than others. But if you set everything to 1.0 then there is no difference and the search engine won’t be able to tell what you think has a higher priority. Usually you would put your home page at 1.0, your primary product or service page as 0.9 and pages that few people will need as a 0.1 or 0.2.

Once your site map is created you need to name it sitemap.xml and upload it to the main directory of your website – the same place your home page is. You’ll want to be sure that the file is structured properly or the search engines won’t be able to read it. Again, there are many free online services that will validate the file for you:

• http://www.validome.org/google/
• http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xml-sitemap.html
• http://www.webmasterwebtools.com/sitemap-validation/index.php

Google and other search engines will look for your site map and factor that information into their review of your site and the index they create for it.

So both types of site maps – one for humans and one for search engines – will help your website be more useful and visible. If you need help in creating either of these for your website please let us know.

The page title defines the title of the document. It is coded into the page by the web designer. The title tag:

• defines a title in the browser topbar
• provides a title for the page when it is added to favorites
• displays a title for the page in search-engine results

It is extremely important to your site’s search engine ranking, but it is often written incorrectly.

Page titles appear across the top bar of the browser. They tell the visitor and the search engines what the page is about. They allow you to tell the search engines which keywords define your website.

The page title appears across the top of the browser.

The page title appears across the top of the browser.

A title should be able to stand on its own and clearly communicate the contents of the page to the reader.

Titles should always contain your keywords and phrases as they are broadly used by search engines to index what the page contains. Each page of your site can, and should, have its own title. It allows you to steer the search engines to specific pages of the site by keyword. This also allows your website to be found with a larger number of keywords.

Here are some good page titles:

• Cardiology, heart and vascular disease, Pasadena, Southern California Heart Specialists
• Dry Cleaning, Laundry, Free Pickup and Delivery – BRYAN’S Cleaners and Laundry
• Rose Bowl Stadium – Sports, Special Events, Film Location

These titles use keywords and let the searcher know what the site will be about.

Bad page titles which we found on the web:

• BitTorrent
• Ubunto Home Page
• Services

These titles are useless unless the searcher already knows and is searching for a particular company. They do not assist in either page ranking or search visibility.

Search engines, such as Google use the page titles to index the page. They display the page title, or a portion of the title, at the beginning of their results.

Search engines display the page title, or a portion of the title, at the beginning of their results.

The page title is often the first impression a person gets of your website, even before they click to it.

It is very important that you use your keywords in your page title. They should appear before your company name and should appear in order of importance. Put the keyword or phrase you’ve chosen as most important first and then the next most important and so on, ending the title with your company name (see examples above).

Google displays the first 64 characters, including spaces, of the title while Internet Explorer and Firefox displays up to 95 characters. Therefore you should ensure that your keywords are prominent in the first 64 characters.

CityCenter Co. uses the page title “Website Design Los Angeles, CA, web design, redesign, programming – CityCenter Co.” It uses 82 characters with spaces. It is displayed completely in the web browsers. Google displays the title as “Website Design Los Angeles, CA, web design, redesign, programming…” The keywords are all displayed for the searcher to see.

The title is also saved when you bookmark a page. It will remind the user of what the page is about each time he checks his favorites.

Summary:
Page titles using well chosen keywords and phrases assist the search engines to properly index and display your site information. They help the people searching for your company to make an informed decision even before they get to your site. They keep your information in front of users who have bookmarked them.

In the next post we will discuss how to use keywords in creating your website’s content.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most asked about topics in web design. While we do not claim to be experts, we do study what the experts say and understand the basics.

In the next few weeks we will pass some of those basics on to you.

First, let’s define SEO. According to Wikipedia, “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural search results.”

Search engines determine which sites appear on their results pages by the words used on the page. While beautiful graphics, audio and video can help the visitor understand your message, a search engine can only read the words. This makes the words you choose when writing and coding a website of prime importance. Choosing the proper words and using them correctly are what SEO is all about.

Now that we know what it is, we need to know how it is done.

The first thing you need to know is:

         What keywords do you want to be found on?

This might elicit a slew of answers. It also often brings an “I don’t know” response. So how do you decide? Here are some questions that might start you thinking in the right direction.

1. If you were looking to check out your competition, what word or phrase would you search on?
2. What are the most common words used describe what you do?
3. Is there a generic term for your product or service? 

Google Analytics reports are a very good tool for finding the keywords your website can currently be found with.

You can also check to see how people have found you in the past. Check your website’s usage statistics. Most hosts offer a free, or low cost, statistics program. Google offers Google Analytics which is a free service. These programs will tell you what keywords were searched on by people who came to your site.

Once you’ve determined which words describe what your business does there are several things that must be done with them in order to make your site as search engine visible as possible.  

In the next post we will discuss how to use the keywords you’ve found to create powerful web page titles that attract search engines.

Email was one of the first Internet technologies to hit the mainstream. It is rare to find somebody these days that doesn’t have an email address. Email is fast, easy, and it helps people communicate.

Despite the advent of “social media” such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, email is still very much with us. How about you? how much time do you spend reading/writing/deleting email each day compared to your time on a social media site?

One of the major advantages of email is that it “reaches out” to the person on the other end. With a website (or social media account) people generally have to actively go looking. But then they forget or get busy on other things. With email they don’t have to do anything more than open their email program and see what is in their inbox.

This guy got an email he liked.

Of course, spam became the fly in the ointment. It overloads your inbox. Some of it is disgusting, all of it is rude: spam makes people not want to read their email. And as a defense against spam email software companies have implemented filters to try to stem the tide.

So what is a legitimate business supposed to do?

The best advice we can give is: don’t stop! Email is still one of the most effective ways to reach your customers and prospective customers. It is fast, inexpensive, and when done right it will make your company more memorable (in a good way).

Here are our recommendations on how to stay in touch with an email marketing approach:

1. Go to the experts: Use one of the many email marketing companies that do this as a business – email is actually a very technical subject and when  you want to do broadcast email as a marketing effort then you need the experts to help you get your email looking good and actually delivered past all of the spam filters. Here are some of the top players in this arena:
   • MailChimp (this is the one we use)
   • ConstantContact
   • AWeber
   • iContact
   • Lyris
2. Get permission: If you have permission to email somebody then it is not spam (Unsolicited Commercial Email). It’s really that simple – if somebody has been a customer of yours in the past then they probably won’t mind hearing from you with an appropriate email. Any professional email service will also put an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the emails you send out so the recipient can “opt out” at any time. And make it one of your marketing activities to ask people to subscribe to your email list.
3. Make it relevant and useful: It’s about them, not you. Make your email interesting and something the recipient can use. Helpful tips, ways to use your product or service, ideas on how to improve their life or business will be appreciated. Special offers are often good news, but heavy sales pitches may not.
4. Rinse and repeat: Email marketing isn’t something you do whenever you remember to do it. Make a schedule and keep communicating. If you follow the rules above you’ll be emailing people who want to hear from you  and will trust you to send them something that will help them.

Even though email is an “old” technology now, it is just as relevant as another oldie-but-goodie, the telephone. Use email marketing correctly to keep yourself in front of your customers and you’ll both win.

(Photo courtesy of Dominic)

It started with websites – a new technology that allowed anybody with Internet access and a hosting account to publish information that the world could see – and see it instantly! No printing costs, no mailing costs. And that started only about 15 years ago.

They're listening

Then came blogs – an even simpler way to get your message online. An easy inteface to use to type in what you want to say – and people see it instantly.

But now that you’re a “writer” who is going to be “published”, what do you write? My mother would be the first one to tell you that I never wrote (snailmail) letters. She paid for me to phone home. Email has been a boon to both of us, but I still don’t usually sit down to write articles or get all chatty with emailing friends.

But I do enjoy what I do as a developer (programmer) with CityCenter. I enjoy learning about new online technologies and determining which ones look like they’ll be of the most benefit to our clients. We like to help our clients improve their websites and help their customers. So that’s what I write about in our blog.

Here is an article I read recently that really gave me some direction and ideas on how to make this blog worthy of reading: Use Blogs to Extend Social Reach, Drive Online Sales. It has some tremendous tips on wrting blog articles – I hope you find it useful!

(image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenniferdebeer/)

Blogs are now one of the most effective ways to get known on the Internet. They are easy to set up, give you an easy interface to upload content, and include other goodies (such as RSS or news feeds) at no extra charge. You can make them look how you want with free themes and add functionality with hundreds of plugins.

But where do you start? Here is an online slideshow from Compendium Blogware that explains “Writing the Perfect Blog Post”:

With these few simple rules you’ll be on your way to telling the world what you know and how your business can help them.