If you have been keeping track you know that I am in the process of moving. It was raining today and I was less than motivated to get on the road again. Thank goodness I decided not to go because of the storms that swept through the middle of my route. Tomorrow is the big day that my journey begins.
Last night and today I launched a new website, when I should have been packing. The site is still under construction and will be fleshed out in the next few weeks to come. The site will be owned and operated as part of SEO by Chris showcasing Birmingham, AL Search Engine Optimization Service. More information will be coming soon about the status of the new venture.
In tradition with the last few post about my journey here is a music video I found on Google Video Search.
On my personal blog I made announcement that I am once again moving. This time it want be as a big of an adjustment so there shouldn’t be a long gap between post.
I read an article the other day about a “Student Twittering his way out of jail“. I have been hearing all the rave reviews about Twitter. I have had an account for a few months but never used it. Since I am going to be moving and I have a Twitter iPhone application setup now I will try it during the move. Check out my updates and follow me along my journey back to Alabama. Follow Chris on Twitter.
Pardon the actual video footage. I couldn’t find a good video to go along with the video. Taylor Hicks is from Alabama just like me. Enjoy!
There has been some recent discussion in the SEO community about Search Engine Standards. I have not yet formed an opinion on the standards. Really there hasn’t been any hard proof or evidence presented to me one way or another. Knowing politics and different administrative bodies, until something is put into writing in an official capacity nothing will be done. Basically what I am saying that it is a whole lot of wasted time and energy until something is done about it.
A few days ago I posed a question to a respected friend in the SEO community, Kalena Jordan. Kalena heads up the Search Engine College and as an old timer in the industry earns more than just my respect.
I asked:
Hi Kalena
This may be a little off your normal topics… But, you always seem to have such a well thought out view that I want to know your opinion of SEO Standards?
What do you really think about the idea? Good and bad?
I still have not formed an opinion on Search Engine Standards and probably will not until I see a first draft of the proposed standards in front of the governing body. My only thought is what happens if the anti-internet regulation people get involved or even the pro? I wonder what kind of political mess that would turn into?
Even the sacred life leads to online marketing. Does that mean I can do holy work and be a Madison Ave. marketer? I was reading the New York TImes this morning on my commute, as I do everyday, and found an article that caught my eye. In a discussion with a friend a couple weeks ago, we were discussing the priesthood and how their membership was dropping off. So I read, to have some interesting point to bring into the discussion. Instead I found something I wasn’t looking for, the Catholic Church using the internet to recruit priest. www.nypriest.com
The story isn’t about internet marketing as much as it is about recruiting to the Priesthood. If you want to read the article, go here.
After reading the article I had to see their website. I somewhat expected a Microsoft Word Style website from 1995 (not much better than mine). At first click I found a very powerful Flash Page. Somebody really did a great job on creating their website. It is neat, clean, and well laid out. One thing that surprised me – it didn’t look very “Churchy.” A good bit of thought went into it and it paid off.
As to the NYPriest.com SEO… There are very few Search Engine friendly elements and though they have a solid page rank could do considerably better. It looks like they have a $1million marketing plan without a complete online marketing campaign.
This SEO test will be a part of a series I want to write about on the effects of the sitemap protocol and if it is really working. Hopefully by the end we will all better understand sitemaps and core principals about XML sitemaps. Stay tuned for more articles on the different sitemap related posts and the tools used.
The experiments
I am going to run an experiment testing sitemap.xml and hanging pages. This will not be a flawless test but it will help me prove my assumptions.
I have been telling clients that if you add a url to an XML sitemap that it will be discovered. Why do I say this? Often times due to different varying factors search engines have a hard time finding pages inside of dynamic content pages. This test is not going to be about accessibility or how content is delivered. The SEO Experiement is only about sitemap files.
The test is going to be limited to hard coding the url into an xml sitemap and see if it can be found. My assumption will not be a solution to linking or standard url structure.
We already know that Google, Yahoo, and MSN will index urls similar to http://www.domain.com/?=123. We also know that pages with session id’s are usually not indexed because of the session variables. What I am trying to prove is that a url listed in an XML sitemap will be found by Google, Yahoo, and MSN without back links and only submitted through the different search engine webmaster tools .
How I am going to do this test is by creating a unique page that is not linked by any other pages and add it to its very own xml sitemap to be discovered. Once I created the pages I will add the sitemap to the webmaster tools section of each search engine. I am going to create another page and add it to a urllist.txt (an old protocol used by Yahoo. In the xml Sitemap I am going to put in 1 page only that is free floating and see how long it takes to get indexed by each search engine. In the urllist.txt file I am going to add another page and see if it is indexed.
Assumptions/problems/and forecast – Hypothesis
The file will be picked up in Yahoo and cached much fast than Google with xml sitemap file. The urllist.txt file will probably not be found on MSN which will be one problem. The other problem with MSN is they don’t yet have a way to add multiple sitemap files through their portal, even though they read robots.txt. The files from the urllist.txt will be picked up first by Yahoo and Google will follow.
Scope
2 html pages
1 sitemap.xml page
1 urllist.txt page
Result
To be continued
Because I don’t want to spoil the experiment I won’t give the specifics locations of the files or exactly how I am going to do it. The experiment could take 1 day or 2 weeks. For now we will see. Stay tuned for the results and summary. More experiments are coming.