Search Engine Consultancy
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XML : Trusty Tool Of The SEO
XML, or eXtensible Markup Language if we’re being all formal, is an excellent code in its own right but it proves particularly useful for SEO since it has been embraced by Google and other search engines for a number of applications.
You can send a list of your products for sale in XML format to Google’s online shopping database, formally known as Product Search, formerly known as Froogle. You can see the dedicated shopping search at http://www.google.com/products
You can also send all sorts of useful information about your company by XML to Google Base. What’s Google Base? Find out here: http://base.google.com/ Why would you want to? Because items from Google Base appear in Google’s main search listings. Take a look at this search on Google for stainless steel frying pans:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=stainless+steel+frying+pans&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
See the bit right at the top that says ‘product search results for stainless steel frying pans’? That’s from items in Google Base. And it’s free to put all your products in there as well! In SEO terms, that means you now have two lines of attack to reach the top of Google. (There are more, of course. It’s entirely possible to lock up the first four positions if you know where to position your products. We know, because we’ve done it before. That’s not including paid advertising on Google either.) Now, just for your information, if you only have one or two items for sale it’s not worth putting an XML sheet together for Google Base, but if you have a few dozen it’s a lot easier to do it the XML way.
Map the structure of your site
Next, the Google Sitemaps allows you to send a map of your site structure direct to Google. There’s more to it than just telling Google where your pages are, though. In return, you get a nice little online ‘webmaster console’ that tells you your average ranking for various terms, who clicks through to where on your site, whether all your pages are properly indexed and a fair bit more. Those are all things that are well worth knowing.
So there you go. There are other reasons why XML is our friend, but those are two of the important ones, SEO-wise. Of course, if messing about with code sounds rather too geeky for your tastes, we’d be only too happy to take the job on.