Last week, we opened up the Wix SEO Clinic. We took a deep look at the websites of 3 wedding photographers. While the sites may have been ranking well for their own names or domains, the odds are you want your business or website to rank well for your keywords, or words used in a search in Google. Refer back to Chapter 1 of the Wix SEO Clinic, to see the condition of these sites’ SEO before they were checked in and given a full check-up by our team of SEO “doctors”.

Real Results in Google

While conducting SEO for these websites, we tracked the progress made, by searching for each site’s main keyword in Google. We marked down this # every few days. Sure enough, over the course of 5 weeks, some real progress was shown:

Case Study # 1: Blaine Photographers

• Main keyword = “California wedding photographers”
• Google rank before SEO:  650
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO:  49

Case Study # 2: Jaime Miller Photography

• Main keyword: “New jersey wedding photographer”
• Google rank before SEO: 350
  
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 70

Case Study # 3: Studio 48

• Main keyword: “Minnesota wedding photographer”
• Google rank before SEO: 150
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 25

How Did These Jumps Happen?

Magic? No. SEO efforts? Definitely.

As you can see, some real changes were made in the rankings of these 3 Wix websites. (Remember: in terms of search engine rankings – the lower the ranking, the more visible your site is to those searching for your keywords!)

We provided step-by-step instructions to these users in terms of what they had to do on their end, inside their sites. We supplemented this by submitting these sites to some key places on the web.

Here’s exactly what we prescribed for these 3 case studies:

1. Optimize Meta Data (Blaine, Jaime Miller, Studio 48)

This is probably the most important thing you can do for your website’s SEO. It’s also really easy with the Wix website builder. There is now a main keyword for each site in both the <Title> tag, and meta description.

2. Added Content to Home Page (Blaine)

To add some content to their site’s home page without disrupting the page’s clean look and feel, we told the folks of Blaine Photography to add footer text. This was done by creating a text box, and simply dragging it to the bottom of the main page. Using the color pickW tool in the editor, a light gray color was chosen for this text, keeping it readable yet not too distracting.

Footer text is a terrific opportunity to get in some quality content, while preserving the look of your site’s homepage. Blaine wrote a basic description of their services in their footer text. And of course, keywords were also included.

3. Added Keyword-Rich Headers (Blaine, Studio 48)

Google loves headers. To add a header in a Wix document, select the “Text” tool and select “Title”. Title texts in Wix are interpreted by Google as header tags.

Blaine was asked by one of our doctors at the Wix SEO Clinic, to add the following keyword-rich headers to various pages in their site.

Home Page Header: “California Wedding Photographers”; Page 2 Header: “California Wedding Photos”; Page 3 Header: “California Engagement Photos”; Page 4 Header: “California Wedding Photographers”; Page 5 Header: “Wedding Photographer Prices”; Page 7 Header: “Wedding Photographer Blog”

Studio 48 was told to add a keyword header on Home page = “Minnesota wedding photographer”

4. Submitted to Google Places (Blaine, Jaime Miller, Studio 48)

This is a crucial step for any small business hoping to get ranked for regional keywords. We submitted each of these websites to Google Places, and customized their profiles. The instructions for doing this are explained pretty well at the Google Places site.

5. Submitted to Wedding Photographer Directories

To gain some more backlinks (and inject some SEO juice into these sites), we looked for some good wedding photography directories. Getting listed in a directory once you submit your URL can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, but it’s well worth the wait. Especially if it’s a directory with a good PageRank. For our wedding photographers, we submitted to the following directories: www.wedplan.net, www.photographypros.com, www.freephotogallery.info,  and www.ferenc.biz.

Resources

We told these users exactly what to do in order to optimize their site’s performance in Google. If you want to do the same for your site, follow the steps listed above. Here are some helpful links to help you along the way:

• How to Choose Your Keywords
  
• How to Fix Your Site’s Meta Data
• How to Make Header Tags in Wix
• How to Get Ranked for Physical Locations
• How to Gain Backlinks

Note: These methods can be applied to both a free website, and a premium site with its own domain. There’s no excuse for applying some basic, subtle SEO adjustments to your site to get the best traffic you can. Remember: SEO is an ongoing process.  We will continue to track the position of these sites as time goes by, more pages are crawled, indices are updated – and SEO efforts continue to be made.

Good Luck, and stay tuned for the next Wix SEO Clinic chapter!

Is Your <Title> Tag Optimized?

Read this post on how to add a <Title> tag to your Wix if you aren’t sure what a Title tag is or how to add one to your Wix.

Character Limit

Titles should be no longer than 70 characters – including spaces. You can copy/paste your Title text into Microsoft Word and use the Word Count tool which tells you how many words and characters entered text contains. Or, just count the number of words, spaces between words, and any other characters you have in your title, and keep it below 70.

If your title is too long OR too short, Google might not process it. This could result in your site being pushed down in search results, or being removed entirely from Google’s index. Your site’s Title is the # 1 thing Google uses for determining what your site is about. So if it’s too short, or too long and wordy it is difficult both for Google, and your visitors, to quickly understand what your site is about.

Word Selection

Your title should include a few words describing your website, company, business, organization, etc. Be descriptive and concise. If you include nothing but an acronym, a made-up word (like, Wix, for example) or a brand name for your Title, it won’t make any sense to Google. Remember – you have to do this in less than 70 characters. You can use dividers to make your titles more readable, like:

Keyword | Brand Name or Brand Name | Keyword

A Wix Without an Optimized Title:

(the actual URL has been removed from the picture to save face for the user)

The Wix.com link actually points to the user’s Wix.  The user wrote to Wix Support, and our team peeked inside the site’s source code.  Sure enough, the <Title> tag was not optimized.  It consisted of only the word “The” and the 5-letter name of the company.

Sites with Optimized Titles

Wix

Do a search in Google for www.wix.com. The very first result is in fact wix.com (as you can see in the green URL), but the hyper-text link (blue or purple underlined text) is Free Website With Free Flash Website Builder at Wix.com. These 56 characters describe Wix.  Google can tell what is on the Wix site, and knows what keywords should be found inside the site’s content as well.

Nike

The same can be observed with Nike. Do a search for www.nike.com in Google. The first search result is – as you’d expect – the Nike URL. But the Title of the link is Nike.com – Official Site for Nike Shoes, Clothing & Gear. The folks over at Nike knew that to SEO their website, they needed to include a few more words than just “Nike” into the site’s title, in order to be indexed properly and remain on top of their game.

Read more about best practices for Title tags on this SEOMoz post.  To optimize your title, click on your account in the free website builder, go into your site, click on Settings and update your Title. Be sure to click SAVE once you’ve made your changes. Then you’ll have to wait until Google recrawls your site in order to see the changes reflected in Google. This can take anywhere from a week to a month, especially if you have no backlinks pointing at your site.

Stay tuned for more SEOMyWix posts on Wixes Behaving Badly – and quick ways to fix them!

When I say “Title” and “Description”, I’m not referring to content that you place on your web page, or the name that you gave to your web document in order to save it in Wix. I’m talking about your site’s metadata – text that is included in your website’s code, which is read by search engines. You do not need to actually do any coding with Wix, but you do need to enter text to your website’s Settings section. The website builder plants this inside your website’s source code automatically.

Add a Title and Description in 3 Simple Steps:

Step 1: Click on the Settings button, at the top of your website builder.

Step 2: In the SEO section, enter your own text in ‘Title’ and ‘Desc’.

Step 3: Click ‘Apply’.

Done.  Simple, right?

Tips for Good Title Text

• Use up to 70 characters (letters, symbols, etc.) including spaces

• Include the name of your website/business

• Include keywords (your type of business or what your main offerings are)

Your website’s Title appears on top of a user’s browser, while they are in your Flash website. Even though people might not pay much attention to this text, search engine crawlers do. If you DON’T insert your own Title text, Wix’s default text will remain there (see examples in the images both above and below, in this post).

Tips for Good Description Text

• Use up to 160 characters, including spaces

• Describe your website or business in clear terms

• Use one or two appropriately placed keywords

This is the text that shows up in a list of search results, underneath each website’s title.  These are the one or two sentences that you can read about a website, before deciding to enter it. In Google, they’re called snippets. If you DON”T add your own description text, default Wix text will appear under your website’s name in a list of search results. This will look pretty strange to people when thinking about which website to enter. Also, make sure you keep your descriptions short enough for all the text to appear. Ellipses (…) at the end of a description in a search looks sloppy.

Free AND Premium Users

Every single site created with Wix has these settings. You have the power to customize these super-important parts of your site, whether it’s a free website or one that you upgraded to a premium site. It’s especially disheartening for us to discover premium users who don’t adjust their site’s Title and Description, since those users have already taken action toward establishing their website’s online success, yet somehow skipped this basic step. It’s like planning a party and forgetting to invite your guests. So please, take a few minutes to make sure you’ve done this really simple, really important step.

5 Ways to Get Your Keywords Noticed:

Many users want to know how to get search engines to recognize specific keywords that they’d like associated with their website.  The goal is to attract potential customers who don’t know you, through organic Google searches.  Follow these steps to have your targeted keywords correctly inserted into your pages.

1.  Make a List of Keywords

Stay organized and focused. Study your competition. Make a list of keywords that are relevant to your business. Start with the obvious ones. For example, if you were creating a website for Lisa’s pancake house you may write the generic word “pancakes” down first, then perhaps “best pancakes”  and then you might get even more specific and choose a local keyword, such as “San Francisco pancakes” or “strawberry pancakes in San Francisco”. You may be able to get indexed for each of these keywords, but the greater question is how well you can get ranked. Even if you get indexed in the 100^th page for pancakes, it probably benefit your business much. Each keyword has different levels of competition which you can see by the number of results and by undertaking some research to find out how many people search for that keyword. Software is available to help such as WordTracker or Google AdWord.

Consider the size and amount of traffic you are likely to generate to your website. If you’re creating a 10-20 or even 50 page website, I don’t recommend trying to compete with the Apple website, for example.

2. Remember Content is King

This cliché survives because it holds a world of truth.  Your website must contain quality, relevant content in order for its keywords to be caught.  Writing the same key phrases over and over again will be recognized as spam by the search engines. If you’ve chosen good and relevant keywords you should have no problem inserting them into your text naturally and organically.   Insert your keywords throughout your text.  Spread them out evenly and discretely without making it obvious.

Aim for your homepage to contain 400 words.  A footer is a good place to add text if you prefer an image-based homepage.  Aim for 250 words on all other pages. For the best results, you should aim for you keyword to appear about 3 times for every 250 words. This includes your titles, headers and regular text.

Google loves headers. More emphasis is placed on any text that appears in your headers, so make sure you word and phrase your headers wisely. In the Wix website editor, select the Text button from your menu, and choose Title. The text you write here is what will be interpreted as a header tag – it’s that simple. The larger your header text, the higher it will rank.

The more text you have, the more opportunity to insert a keyword. Having trouble finding room for more content? For Lisa’s Pancake House, an “About” page or a ‘Reviews’ page may be good places to add some content.

3. Use Your Meta-Tags

Search engines rely on 2 types of Meta tags to discern the subject of a web page or website.

.  These are both found in the Settings section of your Editor, in the SEO Settings box.

Title Tag: The most important part of your page, in terms of SEO.  The title appears on the very top left-hand corner of your browser when you are viewing your Flash website. Make sure your title contains relevant keywords.  Also note that keywords found at the beginning of a title are much stronger than those placed toward the end.  Titles should not be longer than 70 characters, including spaces.

Description Tag: The description tag is another great opportunity to use your keywords. The description cannot be viewed from within the site, but it is the text that will appear alongside the link to your website in search results. This is an important text. Try to keep this text between 150-160 words.  Use at least two of your keywords in the description.  Keep it to the point, be direct and catchy.

You may also add up to 7 keyword tags in this same section of the Editor. Make sure you’re adding keywords or phrases that actually appear in your content.

Alt Texts: You can add “Alt Text” to your images that will be read by search engine crawlers, and cannot be seen by users.  Take this opportunity to use the keyword you are promoting one more time. In the Wix editor, you can add Alt Texts to your gallery pictures through the Manage Photos option.

4. Internal Linking

Internal linking refers to the navigation within your website and the infrastructure of links pointing from one page to another within your Flash website. Since your homepage (or landing page) is usually the page that gets the most traffic and the most links pointing at it, it is usually the most important page in your website.  Use text links to point at the different pages of your website to make sure that the search engine knows what that page is about.

For example, all links within Jack’s New York Pizzeria website pointing at the website’s homepage can use the ‘anchor text’ “Jack’s New York pizzeria” instead of the generic ‘Homepage’. An inner page in Jack’s website might deal exclusively with pepperoni pizzas, so the link to that page can use the anchor text “Jack’s pepperoni pizza”.

Pages with more links pointing at them will be considered as having more importance and relevancy from the point of view of the search engine crawler. The more often a link is used, the more relevancy and importance it is allocated.

5. External Linking

The same principles of internal linking are applied to links from the outside. Get as many backlinks to your site as possible and make sure your links are properly anchored in relevant text – keywords.

You can optimize specific pages for specific keywords by dedicating specific keywords to specific pages. For example, all links using the anchor text: “Jack’s anchovy pizza” to point at a page that has lots of text on the subject of anchovy pizza. Use all the links with the anchor text “Jack’s New York Pizzeria” to point at the home page that has that specific keyword inserted into it repeatedly.

Links will have greater potency when they come from a powerful website. Powerful websites are websites with a high page rank and a lot of traffic. A web page that simply has a long list of links from it (also known as a link farm) won’t have the same effect on your website as a link in a popular pizza review magazine, pointing at your website from an article raving about your great pizza.

Bottom line: the more anchor links pointing at your website – the better. Make sure these links are active.

www.wix.com
wix.com
www.wix.com/index.html
www.wix.com/home.asp

To many these urls are all the same url, but in fact they aren’t. Also, perhaps you’ve noticed that when you type your website’s URL you can add any text you want after the slash and the same page will still show up. Well, what happens when someone somewhere puts a link to your website, and that link isn’t the same one as the basic url you’ve been using.
This creates the risk that Google will index the same page twice, under different urls. So what can you do?
Well, one option is to make sure that you use the same link consistently throughout your website and your link campaign.
Aside from that, Wix is now incorporating a new feature called a Canonical URL.
The canonical url is a tag that appears in your source. (Quick reminder: to see your source right click over your website and choose the “view source” command). Canonicalization is the process of choosing the best url, or rather, the one you want to use and identify with your website. That way, no matter what url gets indexed or what url the user is using, the search engine is told which url is the main one and which urls to disregard.
This is a great way to avoid unnecessary redirects and other techniques whose entire purpose is to avoid duplicate content. Mattcutts expands on the subject in his blog if you want to read more about it in a more general context.
Also, if you have any suggestions about new developments you’d like to see in Wix, whether from an SEO point of view or from a product point of view, you’re welcome to join the Wix forum and add your suggestion to our Wish list.
More updates to come!

So first things first:

• Wix is introducing a new deep linking feature. This will enable you to send links directly to the inner pages of your website. For those of you who are still confused consider what has been happening with your website until now. Anyone who enters your website is automatically redirected to your homepage.  With the new deep linking feature, you can send visitors to a specific page, leading to a better promotion of inner pages. For example, suppose you have a pretty large photography website, and you’ve met a potential client. You have a specific picture you think will be perfect for him. Instead of sending him to your website with a list of explanations on how to reach the exact picture, gambling that this potential client has the patience and determination to actually reach this page, you can send him (or her) directly to the photo or gallery page you want. Good idea right?

At this point, this feature will only work on regular pages (as opposed to mini-pages).

• Getting Inner Pages Crawled. This part of this post is in direct response to recurring queries that have been sent to our support department. Some have noticed that Google will index your inner pages and they will appear as additional results to search queries underneath the homepage result. In some cases, when you change your website’s description you will see that it has been updated in the main result, while these inner pages are still accompanied by the old and outdated description.

This happens in cases where your homepage is crawled and your inner page is not. To see this, visit the cached view of your inner page and compare the date that appears in the header at the top of your page with the one listed for your homepage.

To see the cached view either click the ‘cache’ link which appears alongside your website’s URL in the Google search results, or enter the following search:

Cache:http://www.domainname.com

The solution for this is simple. You must wait until your inner page is crawled and you can hasten this process using the same techniques you used to get your Flash website crawled. You are welcome to browse other posts that appear in this blog for more tips.

One last thing – many of you have been sending different support questions through the comments option. The bad news is that I can’t answer all these support questions through this blog. The good news is that you can easily get an answer through the Wix support. That’s where you can get answers to any technical or even non-technical question you have!

Good Luck!

This new algorithm is being called Google Caffeine and it will be launched some time after the holidays. So what is it? Matt Cutts calls it “…the new technology that improves our indexing infrastructure.”

Here are the categories in which tweaks and changes have been made. In some categories the changes are more dramatic than others, but in all cases the changes are constructed over Google’s basic line of thought – what’s good for you is good for Google and what’s good for Google is good for your users and business as well.

1. Content is Still King

Good news optimizers, content is still king. More to the point, relevant content is still king. Your website’s content should relate to your main message, to your products or your services. You’ll find irrelevant content to be much less effective. Also, an easily indexed website will get higher ranking than a website the Google bot finds hard to crawl. For this reason you should refrain from using a shotgun approach. Adding original content, or presenting your content in an original way is recommend and is also a good way of promoting your website for search engines. Sites that are indexed well lead to accurate search results. Accurate search results improve the service Google can provide its users and in turn improves business. You can apply the same logical train of thought to your customers and/or target market.

2. Meta Tags

Titles and descriptions continue to be critical elements in the indexing process. It’s in your best interest as well as Google’s to provide accurate descriptions to your web pages. While Google will only display up to about 155 characters in its search result and will only crawl about 200 characters, it’s also important not to leave your description too short. I’ve seen many cases in which the user’s description was so short, Google bots decided to use alternative texts instead. The website builders were then surprised to discover irrelevant texts or texts they hadn’t planned on using as descriptions spearheading their search results.

3. Website Loading Time

While I haven’t mentioned this criteria before it is based on the same principles as the rest of Google indexing doctrine. If your website takes a long time to load, its reasonable enough to assume that this will frustrate a certain percentage of users who will then leave the site by backtracking or by giving up on the search altogether. This affects the site’s usability and therefore also the website’s ranking in Google. So next time you upload pictures with the wix website builder, make sure they aren’t heavy, large sized images that will make it really hard for the page to load.

4. Refreshing Content

The new caffeine algorithm is expected to give greater weight to websites that are being constantly refreshed and updated with new content. This means that websites that have not been touched for a while will lose their ranking. This is a logical progression as it stands to reason that if a website has not been updated for a while, it has either been abandoned or has become outdated and therefore lost relevancy. Once again Google proves, that what is good for Google is good for you.

5. Quality Linking

Anybody who deals with SEO knows there are high quality links and low quality links and everything in the middle. If this is the first time you’re hearing this I recommend that you read a few of the earlier posts in this blog on links. From now on, quality links will not be the only factor. This means that even if you have a link to your website from a great site with a fantastic page rank, unless the content of your site is relevant to the source site and unless the link is organic, or a so called ‘natural link’, it will have less importance in determining your ranking and indexing. The same goes for outgoing links. If you send a link out to a great website with a high page rank, make sure that website is relevant to yours, otherwise you’re simply wasting potent linking juice.

Well that’s it for today folks. I guess all we can do is stay put and wait expectantly for the new caffeine algorithm to kick in so we can all have some fun!

1. Where is it LEAST important to include keywords?

1. title
2. body text
3. Meta Keywords
4. Headers

2. What is the best way to maximize the frequency with which your website/web page is crawled by he search engines?

1. Insert a “crawl delay” parameter into the robots.txt file.
2. Submit your site directly to the search engines through submission forms
3. Visit Google’s Webmaster Central and increase your “crawl frequency”
4. Search for your website more frequently in the major search engines
5. Add new content frequently

3. How can description Meta tags help with the search engine optimization?

1. This is a trick question! – Meta descriptions are not important
2. They’re an important ranking factor in search algorithms
3. They’re the texts that entice searchers to choose and click your listing
4. They help inform search engines which keywords are most important on your page

4. Which of these sources is considered the best source for competitive link data?

1. Ask.com
2. MSN
3. Alexa
4. Google
5. Yahoo

5. What is the difference between SEO and SEM?

1. There is no difference, they are synonymous
2. SEO refers to organic/natural listings while SEM deals with PPC or paid searches
3. SEM implies association with traditional marketing companies, while SEO is usually independent or uaffiliated with traditional marketing
4. SEO focuses on organic/natural search ranking, SEM encompasses all aspects of search marketing
5. SEO is what they call SEM on the West coast

6. Which of the following is NOT considered to be a highly important factor in ranking a particular search term?

1. Temporal relevancy – the number and quality of links pointing at a certain page over a given time
2. An HTML validation (according to W3C standards) of a page
3. The quality and quantity of all external links to the page
4. The link popularity of a specific page within the domain
5. Keyword usage in the title tag of the page

7. When creating “flat architecture” for a site, what are you attempting to minimize?

1. The KB size/weight of pages targeting search engines
2. The total amount of scrolling necessary for the website’s navigation
3. Colors used in the design
4. The number of tabs/windows that open during normal navigation
5. How many links a search engine must go though in order to reach content pages

8. Which of the following is NOT the best method for creating quality title tags?

1. Writing great copy that encourages users to “click” on your listing
2. Making sure each page has a unique title
3. Including an exhaustive list of keywords
4. Limiting the title tag to about 65 characters, including spaces

9. Which character limitation is the best in regards to the title tags (assuming you want your title tag to be fully displayed in search engines)?

1. 108
2. 20
3. 65
4. 45
5. 85

10. The ‘PageRank’ was dubbed just so because it was created by Larry Page and not because it happens to rank pages.

1. False
2. True

11. Creating a ‘sitemap’ with links to other pages in your domain is important because…

1. Most web users outside theUS prefer this navigational method
2. It can help search engine crawlers access many pages on your website easily
3. A site map reduces the rate at which spiders crawl your pages
4. It’s a mandatory requirement for submission to most of the important search engines

12. Why are absolute (http://www.mysite.com/my-category) URLs better than relative (“/my-category”) URLs for on-page internal linking?

1. Absolute URLs provide a link back to the original website after they are scraped and copied onto other domains
2. They provide more keyword context for search engines
3. These URLs provide greater keyword weight
4. Absolute URLs are filled with vodka – duh!
5. Search engines can’t crawl relative URLs

13. How should you avoid duplicate content issues that are often present in temporal pagination issues (where content moves from page to page, as can be seen in article lists, multi-page articles and blogs)?

1. Use a Meta robot “noindex, follow” tag to the paginated pages
2. Each page should be displayed in a new tab/window
3. Link the paginated pages with a rel=”nofollow” in the link tag
4. Pagination does not have any duplicate content problems associated with it

14. What should you do with old URLs after updating your site’s URL structure to build new versions of your pages?

1. Nothing
2. Move the old links to a sub-domain
3. Create 404 landing pages for the old URLs so search engines & visitors understand that the content is no longer there
4. Use a 301 to redirect them to the new URLs
5. Request their removal via webmaster central and site explorer in Yahoo!

15. When multiple pages on your website are targeting the same keywords, which is the best way to avoid keyword cannibalization?

1. Restrict search engines from crawling/indexing less important pages
2. Remove duplicate keywords from the Meta keywords tag on secondary pages
3. Add links on all the secondary pages directing back to the page you want ranked for the term/phrase, using primary keywords as anchor texts
4. Increase keyword density on the main page and make sure its denser than that of the other pages

Did better than you thought? Not as good?

Here are a few good SEO websites/blogs you might enjoy reading for more information:

• Matt Cutts has been working for Google since 2000. His blog is an easy read and always a great place to find updates on Google.
• The SEOBOOK is also a good read with handy information and links to a good training center.
• Another place to read up on SEO tricks and tools is SEOCHAT.
• One of the best places to get updates is search engine land.

Answers: [1=4] [2=5] [3=3] [4=5] [5=4] [6=2] [7=5] [8=3] [9=3] [10=2] [11=2] [12=1] [13=1] [14=4] [15=3]

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

I want to use this post to address a prevalent misconception. Many people, as they begin to optimize their website, tend to perceive this process as somewhat contradictory with the rest of the work they’ve put in with the product and potential users in mind. In fact, the work they invest in their website is divided between work optimizing for users and work optimizing for Google – when in fact these two are almost one and the same.

Google and you have the same agenda

Google wants to know what your website is about – so do we. Think of your new free Flash website as a well written essay. You’d have to ask yourself first what the essay is about and if you can’t summarize this concept in a sentence, you aren’t doing your job well. What is your website about? Is it about selling t-shirts? Is it a business website for a dentist’s office? Is it your band’s fan page? Make sure this message is clear and comes across fast. There were over 183 million websites on the internet as of early 2009 and this number just keeps growing. If a visitor reaches your website and doesn’t know what it’s about he has no reason to stay. It takes a lot less time to click your mouse than it does to walk out of a store.

Google has the same agenda. It wants to be able to give the best search results and this depends very much on how you present your website. It uses algorithms that are meant to discover your website’s purpose and subject. That’s why it reads the titles and gives them precedence over other types of texts. That’s why the description is so important. That’s why it crawls the links leading to your website to understand what subjects are relevant to your website. If you’re website’s message is clear to Google, it will most likely be clear to an actual human visitor.

Define your website’s message clearly

Many people have searched and found ways to outmaneuver Google’s algorithms and get their website listed on the first page. However, Google continuously updates its algorithms and these websites don’t last very long. Spamming is basically a waste of time at the end of the day. You aren’t serving your users/visitors by offering them low-quality content, and you aren’t going to get very far with Google either. Playing the game however, may be a little harder and more complex, but it will improve the quality of your website and get you the right kind of traffic.

So make sure you define your message clearly. Notice our header: ‘Learn. Optimize. Get Your Wix Ranked’. Bing.  You know exactly what this blog is about. So does Google.

Are you being Google friendly?

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Site Map for Visitors

Suppose you’ve just built a Flash website with Wix and you have 20 different pages. Even if you’ve built a great system of navigation, it’s more than likely that several of your pages are harder to get to. To make the visit to your website easier on your user you can manually create a dedicated sitemap page. This is particularly useful if your website is dynamic and growing. A good sitemap saves your visitors a lot of headache and keeps your site organized.

Site Map for Search Engines

The second type of sitemap is an xml sitemap. XML is a markup language, a textual data format often used to store information, specifically for usability over the internet. The xml sitemap is specifically for search engine crawlers. It lists URLS for your website as well as additional metadata information about each URL such as the most recent update, the frequency of page changes; its importance in relation to other URL’s listed for your website, etc. XML sitemaps are simply a great way for webmasters to let search engines know what’s going on in their site.  It is not used or viewed by visitors to your website. When you create a free website with Wix, your website pages are automatically updated and included in the Wix xml sitemap. This is done to ensure that Google will index all the pages of your website.

When you create a premium website with your own URL, a dedicated xml sitemap is created on your behalf. You can see this xml by entering your domain + /sitemap.xml.

Example:

http://www.eventsbysandj.com/sitemap.xml

What will appear looks like the following image:

As you can see, it’s not really meant for users, but it’s good to know what it looks like anyhow.

Remember, using a site map doesn’t guarantee that all your website pages are indexed by Google. What it does is pinpoint their location to the web crawlers, significantly increasing the chances your website will be indexed properly.

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