Robots.txt: SEO landmine or secret weapon?
Robots.txt tells search engines what to crawl—or skip. Learn how to create, test, and optimize robots.txt for better SEO and site management.
Topic: Site map
ChatGPT for SEO: Boost rankings & automate workflows
Discover how to use ChatGPT for SEO—generate content, streamline audits, and improve rankings with AI-powered insights and automation tips.
Your guide to sitemaps: best practices for crawling and indexing
Sitemaps make it easier for search engines to discover and index your pages. Here's all you need to know and how to create one.
When and how to use HTML sitemaps for SEO and UX
Learn instances where using visual, HTML sitemaps make sense than simply relying on your website's navigational structure or XML sitemaps.
Bing announces refreshed Bing Webmaster Tools
In the coming weeks, a new Bing Webmaster Tools will make for a faster, cleaner, responsive and actionable toolset for SEOs and webmasters.
Google Search Console adds new actions to sitemap report
Google is proving that it is continuing to port old features from the old Search Console to the new one.
SEO Glossary
Do you know the difference between On-Page and Off-Page SEO? How about a Sitemap and a SERP? Find out by searching through our [glossary_exclude]SEO Glossary[/glossary_exclude] below. The glossary is being updated all the time. If you think there is anything missing, please get in touch to let us know. Please note: The below contains terms, […]
New: Bing Sitemap Plugin Helps Webmasters Create XML Sitemap Files
Bing announced, on its Bing Webmaster Blog, a new feature that helps webmasters create two types of XML Sitemaps. Bing created a server-side application that works on both IIS and Apache servers that helps you create a comprehensive Sitemap and, also, a recently updated Sitemap. The binaries can be downloaded at the Microsoft download site. […]
Deep Dive Into Bing Webmaster Tools: Part 1
Over the last decade, search engine marketing has become a multi-billion dollar media channel powerhouse. It currently represents half of the $35B digital marketing budgets in the U.S., and it’s even bigger globally. The marriage between search practitioners and the engines has always been, at best, a work in progress. On one hand, search engines […]
A Black Friday & Cyber Monday Shopper’s Guide To Comparison Shopping Search Engines
The holiday shopping season is almost upon us. Black Friday comes at the end of the week, followed by the increasingly popular Cyber Monday. While there are plenty of deal sites, there also remain traditional shopping search engines that consumers may wish to use. Shopping search engines, or perhaps more properly, product and price comparison […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 24, 2012
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google Asked To Take Down Over 1.2 Million URLs Last Month From Search Results Google announced they have enhanced the Google Transparency Report to include the removal requests to take down […]
Mobile SEO & The Need For Descriptive Links
It’s a well known fact that links play a key role in search engine optimization. In addition to providing a physical connection between pages, search engines also use links to get advance notice of the content they’ll find at the other end of that link. While it’s true that search engines place the greatest value […]
Video Sitemaps Errors Now In Google Webmaster Tools Labs
Google has added a new report to the Google Webmaster Tools Labs section. The new report is named “Video Sitemaps” and it should include errors specific to Video Sitemaps files. Google’s Matt Cutts has said at SMX Advanced not once and but twice that video sitemaps is one, of many, areas Google’s search quality team […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 28, 2010
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google To Phase Out Old Keyword Tool In Exchange For New Version If you try to access Google’s external keyword tool, you may notice that you are sent to the new […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 21, 2010
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google On Break Up: Cut Us In Half, They’d Demand Quarters Google isn’t mincing words in response to reports yesterday that a consumer advocacy group thinks the government should break up […]
SES Day One Coverage
The SES New York show just completed their first day of conference sessions. Below is a listing of all the conference blogging I have found throughout the day. 10 Things To Supercharge Your SEM Campaigns in 2010 from SES Y 2010, Search Engine Roundtable Achieving Success with Improved Ads Quality from SES NY 2010, Search […]
6 New Years Resolutions For In-House SEMs
Your resolution list might look different than this one, but that’s not the point. The point here is that you actually have an SEO resolution list. Either get cracking on those projects that stalled in 2009 and find your success by managing the work smartly, or use some of these ideas to jumpstart your 2010 […]
Google Adds Change of Address To Notify Google Of Domain Change
Google announced a new feature in Google Webmaster Tools named change of address. This feature allows webmasters to notify Google when they move domain names. When used, Google will update the index to reflect your new URL. The change will stay in effect for 180 days, by which time Google would have crawled and indexed […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 13, 2009
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: New York Times To Restore Links To IHT Stories In Coming Weeks Over the weekend, the New York Times was once again ridiculed for how links to its former International Herald […]
Google Webmaster Tools Gets Major Overhaul
Google has announced a major overhaul of Webmaster Tools that’s filled with both major and minor design and functionality changes. The most obvious change is the new dashboard that now shows Top search queries, Crawl errors, Links to your site, and Sitemap information — saving users what used to be several clicks to get this […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 5, 2009
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Report: Sitemaps Decrease Crawler Response Time
An SEOMoz post has documented statistics on how submitting a Sitemap to Google and Yahoo impacts the rate of crawling that web site. The results show that submitting a Sitemap to Google and Yahoo decreased the time it took Google and Yahoo to crawl the page. It is important to note that the test was […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 30, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google Adds API To Webmaster Tools
The Google Webmaster Central Blog announced that they now have APIs for developers and webmasters to tap into. You can now access some of the data you see in Google Webmaster Tools through an API. API features currently include:
10 Fundamental Tips To Improve Your SEO
In my colleague Matt Lester’s recent Search Engine Land column, he discussed ten tips for a more effective paid search campaign. For this article, I’ll follow up Matt’s advice with ten tips to help you develop a more effective search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. But before we dive into the tips, let’s briefly look at […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 28, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Sitemaps.org Update: You Can Now Store Your XML Sitemap Files Anywhere!
The major search engines have announced an update to the sitemaps.org protocol which enables site owners to store their XML Sitemap files in any location — even on a different domain than the one referenced in the Sitemap. This will be a welcome change for those who manage multiple domains and would like to keep […]
Go Daddy Customers Now Get Bonus Google Webmaster Tools
A new partnership between Go Daddy web hosting and Google Webmaster Tools gives Go Daddy customers easy access to the features available within Google Webmaster Tools. According to the release, Go Daddy customers can opt-in to the integration for their hosted sites directly from their control centers. This jump starts account creation, site submission, and […]
Consolidating Sitemap Files With Google
Mickey Kataria has posted on the Google Webmaster Central blog that if you can verify ownership of multiple sites, you can consolidate the Sitemap files for those sites and either combine the URLs from those sites into one Sitemap or create separate files for each site, but store the files in one location. Previously, any […]
Live Search Now Supporting Sitemaps Autodiscovery Via Robots.txt File
This morning I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Microsoft Live Search is finally now supporting sitemaps via autodiscovery. Microsoft will only use your sitemaps file if it is listed in your robots.txt file. You cannot currently ping Microsoft or upload your sitemaps file to Microsoft.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 18, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google AdSense Launches Site Authentication Feature
The Inside AdSense blog announced that they have launched a new feature named “Site Authentication.” The Site Authentication feature enables you to give the AdSense crawler access to your password protected pages. All you need to do is provide AdSense with a username and password. Then the AdSense crawler will gain access to those protected […]