Google Sitemaps

Posted September 26, 2011 in Website Tips

This is not your regular site map, which is essentially a page on a site that lists all internal site links. A site map of this type exists for ease of visitor navigation. A Google Sitemap, on the other hand, is an XML document that you submit to Google. It’s basically a list of pages that you’re telling Google you’d like them to recognize and index.

With WordPress sites, my method of choice is installing the Google XML Sitemaps plugin. Before letting the script build your sitemap for the first time, check go over all of the settings. For most Themes, you’ll want to select “Do not use automatic priority calculation” (unless you’re an active blogger), have your Sitemap content include homepage, posts, and static pages, modify change frequencies according to your best estimate (if in doubt, select monthly for all except “Older archives”), and set the priority level of your home page, posts, and static pages to be 1.0. Once these settings are configured, click on Update options. Then click on the link at the top of the page to build your sitemap. You will receive a success message after your sitemap is built.

For non-WP sites, building your own Sitemap can be very simple. You can do it yourself or have a free service generate it for you. You can Google to find one or use this one: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com. After your Sitemap is built, all it takes is access to your hosting account to upload your Sitemap. That’s it.

You could let it rest there but let’s go a step further. If you don’t have a Gmail account, create one. This opens up the world of Google Webmaster Tools to you.

The first thing you should do after you sign up for Webmaster Tools is submit your site. Google guides you painlessly through this process. You will be required to verify ownership of a site before Google accepts your site into your Webmaster account. My preferred method of verification is uploading a very small file Google provides to the root directory of a site. It’s really simple to do if you’re comfortable working with cPanel File Manager or an FTP account. Another method is to add a meta tag Google provides to your site header. On WP sites, you can do this directly through your administration interface. For help with either of these verification methods, anyone who has purchased an ANA Theme or WP Installation package can contact me.

Once your site is verified, you can check the status of your Sitemap along with a ton of other goodies. Find out what keywords are bringing traffic to your site, see how many inbound links you have (the more the merrier as far as SEO is concerned), check for any errors Google’s crawlers might find, etc. Anyone who has a website should keep an eye on these things or employ a webmaster to deal with it. This is, in my eyes, part of the responsibility of having a site on the web.

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Track your Site Visitors

Posted June 9, 2011 in Website Tips

Keeping track of your website visitors just makes good sense. Why wouldn’t you want to know how people are finding your site and what they’re doing once they’re there?

Most website hosting accounts include some type of visitor logs. ANA Design’s hosting cPanel has several – Awstats, Webalizer, and Latest Visitors. These programs can provide valuable information about your site visitors. In my experience, though, the amount of information they provide leaves much to be desired. That’s where external hit counters enter the story.

There are lots of hit counters out there. Just Google “website hit counter” or “website visitor tracking” and see what you get. Usually these services require you insert a small piece of javascript into your site pages. This bit of code links your site to your hit counter account. You then login to your account on the site you signed up with when you want to check out your stats.

My favorite hit counter is from www.statcounter.com. The account is free, easy to set up, and gives the best stats (imo). You can upgrade to a paid account for a small fee, which increases your log size. But all the great features are available with free accounts.

Do you ask the question “Why bother?” There are plenty of good reasons. Here’s three:

- If you pay for advertising, you should know how many hits you get from each ad. Don’t waste your money paying for ads if they’re not bringing you traffic.

- If your contact form returns the IP address of the person who filled it out, you can look for that IP on your hit counter. Good for screening purposes.

- If you care about search engines (and most sane website owners should), hit counters can tell you what search terms people are using to find your site, which search engines you’re getting referrals from, etc.

Monitoring your site’s traffic can be extremely beneficial for your business. It doesn’t take much time or effort to install an external hit counter on your site. Go ahead and do it. I bet you’ll be glad you did!

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The Almighty “alt” Tag

Posted May 16, 2011 in Website Tips

OK so it isn’t really almighty. It will not bring you to search engine nirvana.

Come to think of it, it’s not even really a tag. It’s an HTML image attribute. Still, proper use of “alt” in photos on your site will definitely help your site’s SEO.

Let me explain.

Photos in web pages are inserted using code such as:
<img src=”http://www.yoursite.com/path-to-your-image.jpg” alt=”this is the attribute we’re discussing”/>

An attribute provides information about an HTML element. The only required attributes for photos are “src” and “alt” (the “src” attribute points to the location of the image you want to display). There are plenty of optional attributes, none of which I’ll go into here. What we’re focusing on is “alt”.

Technically, the alt attribute is meant to be alternative text for an image. If the image is not available, the text inside your “alt” tags is displayed instead. Ostensibly, this would be a short description of the image.

That’s no fun.

When search engines scan HTML documents, they take notice of whatever text is inside an image’s “alt” tag. That makes this a great place to artfully insert some keywords. It’s what makes “alt” not almighty, but important to your site’s SEO.

Remember that moderation is key! Be careful to not go overboard and stuff in too many keywords. Overuse of “alt” can backfire and have a negative search engine effect. Control yourself and you’ll soon see search engines start to pick up on what you’ve placed in the sort-of-almighty-alt-attribute-aka-tag.

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Backing Up Your Site

Posted April 27, 2011 in Website Tips

It’s important to always keep current backups up your site. If your hosting account has a cPanel similar to ANA’s cPanel, it’s extremely easy to do.

Manual file backup:

  • In your hosting account cPanel, under the Files menu, click on File Manager
  • Double click on or check the box next to any folder you want to backup
  • Click on the “Compress” icon from the top menu
  • Select “zip archive” and do not change the destination directory (this sends the backup to the directory you’re currently in)
  • Click on “make archive”
  • Once your file is compressed, a message will come up showing it as completed, then you can close that box
  • Now locate your compressed file in your directory, then double click on it to save the file to your computer
  • Individual files can be backed up by simply double clicking on the file name to download it to your computer
  • Save as many folders as you want using this method

Once you’ve downloaded the compressed file(s), delete in in your file manager by checking the box next to it, then click on the “delete” icon near the top of the page. Leaving backups on the server is a security risk for your site so please do not omit this step.

For database-driven sites, such as WordPress, you also need to backup your database(s). Your site’s database contains vital information. In WordPress, for example, your database contains all your posts, pages, and comments.

To backup your database, take the following steps:

  • in cPanel, click Backups
  • Click on the backup type(s) you’d like to make. In this case, locate your database from the list
  • Select a destination on your PC for where you would like to save it
  • Click Save
  • It will then start to download

    • You can also make backups of your home directory using the same method. However, I don’t always trust these backups. Depending on the size of your site, the backup could fail. I recommend manually backing up important site files.

    While most hosting companies make periodic backups of all sites on their servers, these backups are usually not guaranteed and it may require a fee and/or lots of time to get your site restored.
    It’s your responsibility as a website owner to make periodic backups of your website. For your own peace of mind.

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