When we see the term “sitemap” we are fairly sure we know what we are dealing with. The term is very descriptive of the job that this online tool is designed to do. But what about sitemaps for search engines? How do they work? In what specific ways can sitemaps help both developers and users?

We may want to start with the idea of a traditional sitemap so we get a solid understanding of the concept. Then we can progress to sitemaps for search engines, even using both to create a successful strategy in the online world.

A traditional sitemap is a rather simple and efficient way for a Web site visitor to find a specific page or section on a complex Web site. It’s best to start with a home-page link then offer a list of links to main sections of the site. Those sections can offer details to pages. Be absolutely sure the links are accurate and take the visitor to the exact location described.

In addition, it’s generally best to provide one page (sitemap) where search engines can find access to all pages. A search engine sitemap is a tool that the Web designer or administrator uses to direct search-engine spiders based on frequency and order within the Web site.

Press releases can’t just be this week’s version of “Gosh, Wow, Look how Awesome We Are.” They should be newsworthy and pertain to one topic only. They should be written in a tone appropriate for your industry’s readers, and they should be optimized for keywords in the title, tags, image filenames, and URL if you’re allowed to customize it. Your press release should ideally contain links to your home page, a product page, and a blog post to give readers a comprehensive view of your business.

Some press releases contain embedded video these days. If it’s high quality and relevant, then it’s worth including. If you don’t add video, then add images if you can. If they’re given relevant titles, then people can find them using image searches, providing one more route back to your site.

Link building isn’t something you should just write at the bottom of your list to do later. It is something that you should work into your schedule preferably every day. There’s no substitute for great content, and for politely and genuinely asking good sites if they will link to your homepage or to some other page on your site. Devote half an hour to it every day and see what a huge difference it makes.

Some of the “Don’ts” for link building include the use of paid linking schemes. C’mon! Your site’s better than that. A thousand crappy links that you paid hard-earned money for aren’t worth anything and in fact could get you penalized or banned from search engines. But the main “Don’t” for link building is this: Don’t neglect it. Your site is too important to languish in the bottom of the search engine pile. Inbound links from quality sites are a testament to that.

Other good web content tips include using short lists whenever possible, using relevant anchor text for your links, and avoid obnoxiously flashing graphics. Check out the screen shot from part of a page off Ars Technica website to see a good example of how a website should read.

Because keeping a website updated with new content is so important, many webmasters choose to outsource this job in order to be able to concentrate on other aspects of the business. Hiring a freelancer can work well as long as you make your requirements clear and have good communication back and forth with the freelancer.

The takeaway from all this is that content creation isn’t just a sideline, but an integral part of your SEO plan. So if you’re not prepared to regularly create good content and don’t have a staff member who can devote the time it requires, then you should really consider outsourcing. With good, fresh, relevant content, your site’s PageRank and position in the search engine results will steadily increase.

You can download a free back link analyzer like the one from SEObook. Using this, you can analyze, say, the top hundred back links by PageRank and Alexa Rank. All you have to do is load them into a spreadsheet and order them that way. This lets you see where their best links are from. If there are bunches of back links from one domain, the competitor probably owns that domain. Figure out where your best bets are for finding your own back links, and start asking. You’ll probably get at least a few good back links this way.

Your best strategy is to use original video on your site. If you do this, you may want to consider using a service that lets you include keywords and title in the embed code so that the search bots can find it more easily. Veeple (veeple.com) is one such service. Barring that, however, you can embed video from other sites, as long as you add value to that video by including related, original content such as a transcript or a review of the video.

Using original video or adding value to non-original video is the best bet for cracking those elusive first page Google “Video results for (whatever)” spots that you see more often these days.

With text, images (properly tagged) and video, you can pursue a more comprehensive approach to search engine optimization, and a multi-pronged, well balanced strategy is going to do the most for your site over the long haul.

The overall Google Network is made up of the Search Network and the Content Network. Your ads will appear on the Search Network if you have so chosen this in your campaign settings. In these cases, the user’s search query words determine where the ads are targeted. These are the ads that show up in a column next to search engine results, like the ones seen in the screen shot. The higher the keywords’ Quality Scores, the higher ads show up in these columns.

As for the Content Network, the eligibility of your ad to show up on a particular content site, and its location on that site are determined by your keyword’s Quality Score for content, which is based on past performance of your ad on this site, and on similar sites. The Quality Score for Content is also based on relevance to the keywords and those of the ad group on this site.

Using the Google Keyword Tool, and optimizing your ads so that they are highly keyword-specific will help boost your keywords’ Quality Scores.

It’s also a good idea to find out if your server supports the HTTP header “if-then-modified.” With it, your server can tell Google if your content has changed since the last crawl of the site, saving you bandwidth.

If you use the robots.txt file, you can tell crawlers which directories can be crawled, and which can’t. Google Webmaster Tools has a robots.txt analysis page that can help you determine if you’re using robots.txt correctly. That way you can prevent crawling of things like search results pages or automatically generated pages that aren’t going to add any value for users finding you via search engine.

Another great test of how healthy your site is (at least as far as Google is concerned) is how fast pages load. You can use the Page Speed tool as directed here to check.

Name files accurately with keyword enriched filenames: “singing-cat-loves-our-cat-treats.avi” is better than “MOV2847-a.avi.”
Optimize the page that your video is on. Have keyword enriched (not stuffed) text before and after your video.

Submit your video to search engines.

If you submit your video site to major directories and were listed with at least one of them, then the other crawlers will be extremely likely to pick up the url for their search engine.

Create a video sitemap for Google with video-specific tags (as seen in the screen shot). It must have a link to a landing page for your video and indexing information. Several fields of the sitemap are optional, but they can help you out, so take advantage of them if you can. Click here for the basics of sitemap protocol.

When you’ve created a video sitemap, submit it to Google with Webmaster Tools. While this won’t guarantee your video page will show up in the search results, it certainly tips the tide in your favor.

The only real certainty is that keyword stuffing (forcing a high percentage of keywords into page content to the detriment of the content itself) is not good and can result in a penalty from various search engines. Just about any search will give you first page results that have widely varying keyword percentages, including, believe it or not, 0%. Over the long term, good content rises above keyword-stuffed pages with little useful information on them.

For example, if you search on the keyword “beekeeping,” the top result, as you see in the screen shot, is the Wikipedia article, which has a keyword density of about 1.4%. The second-ranked search result is http://outdoorplace.org/beekeeping/citybees.htm, which has a keyword density of 0.6%. The third-ranked search engine result has a 3.7% keyword density.

This in no way suggests that 1.4% keyword density is “optimal,” but that there are factors other than keyword density at work in determining search engine rankings. There is no escape from the need for good content regardless of keyword density.