The Top 10 SEO Issues That Stop You Getting More Internet Visibility (7 And 8 Explained):

Post 4 of 5 – Why is a Sitemap important and How External Links To Relevant Websites are Critical

This is part 4 of a series of posts for Website Owners wanting to implement organic SEO for their own website.

Issue 7: Sitemap

Having a good sitemap on your website is a very good idea for two reasons:

• Its good for visitors who are lost, if they can find the site easily they can quickly navigate around the website
• The search engines will naturally index your sitemap, so its a great place to put all you important internal links so that they get picked up and indexed appropriately.

Apart from having no sitemap, the biggest mistake that website owners make when it comes to having a useful site map is that they just list the pages on the website.

You’ve seen it before, its just along list of bullet points with links to some of the pages on the website.

Having a good sitemap can really help with both your ‘organic’ rankings and your visitor satisfaction.

A good example of how to put a meaningful sitemap together can be found here, http://www.westportwoodshotel.com/sitemap.html .

You can see that it has:

• Keywords as part of the page links
• A short relevant paragraph describing the page beside the link
• Keywords embedded in the paragraph text to enhance relevancy for the search engines and visitors alike
• Many links are in human readable format and are seo friendly format, i.e.
• http://www.westportwoodshotel.com/equestrian-holidays-ireland and not something like http://www.westportwoodshotel.com/sh1301×6354.html

Issue 8: External Links To Relevant Websites

What website does your website link to?

The search engines like to get an idea of other websites that you think are important for your particular area. If you link to no other websites you should change this immediately.

You should find official bodies, organisations, blogs, useful industry directories, and websites that will enhance your user’s experience.

So, ask yourself, what additional information would visitors to my website find useful?

If you have not already seen the video tutorial below, study it now to help you to plan a link building project.

How To Build Links To Your Website.

Once you identify these links, reference them on pages that make sense. Don’t bundle all your links onto one links page.

You should also ensure that you are not sending your visitors to low quality or spam websites. These ‘bad neighbours’ will brush off on your website and you’ll also be tagged as a spam website.

A website also needs to be well-networked to gain traction. Links to well regarded websites such as the BBC or national newspapers will act to promote your website, boosting its ranking with Google.

The big picture conclusion is as follows……

Natural Listings are More Credible and More Relevant

According to Forrester Research………

“Big firms are looking more at SEO than pay per click because they realise that consumers are becoming aware the listings on the side and top of the page are paid for and that natural listings are in some cases more credible and more relevant,”

Rebecca Jennings, principal analyst at Forrester Research.

Forrester forecasts that spending on pay per click in America will increase between 2007 and 2012 by 125% to $10.1 billion (£5.1 billion), compared with SEO soaring.

Look out for issues 9 and 10 in our next post.

Links to previous posts in this series:

Post 1 – Issues 1 and 2

Post 2 – Issues 3 and 4

Post 3 – Issues 5 and 6

Post 5 – Issues 9 and 10

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