August 2008

Google offers free webmaster tools to help you check for technical issues that may be barring your website from high natural rankings. Here’s the skinny on what’s available in Google’s Webmaster Tools, and what you can do with them.

Note: To use all the webmaster tools available, you must have FTP/back-end access to your website. This is so you can verify your site on Google and utilize automatic diagnostic features that help you improve the indexing of your site by search robots.

1. Log into Google’s Webmaster Tools with your Google Account info.

2. Type in the URL of the site you want to optimize in the Dashboard.

3. You will now see an Overview page, where you can follow instructions to verify your site by uploading a file to your server via FTP, or adding a meta-tag to the site’s HTML. Verification will unlock diagnostics tools, statistics on your site, link information, and various other tools.

4. Now it’s time to upload a sitemap in xml format to Google. It’s easy to create your own site map online, or learn how to make one yourself using Sitemap Protocol. Once your sitemap.xml file has been created, upload it via FTP to the highest directory on your site’s server. Now go to the Sitemaps section of WM Tools and click on the link to “Add a Sitemap.”

5. After submitting your sitemap, go to Diagnostics > Web Crawl. This is where information is listed about errors or issues impeding Google’s searchbot from crawling any page on your site. This includes any broken links, pages that time out before loading, and any restricted URLs. Using this tool to identify erroneous pages on your site will allow to pinpoint the problem to go in and repair site content.

6. I will skip Mobile Crawl as that is for websites designed for mobile devices - and since this is a fairly new invention, I’m sure this is not applicable to most of you.

7. Now go to Diagnostics > Content Analysis. This page deals with issues to do with the actual content on your site, including meta-tags and title tags. You can drill down and identify pages on your site with duplicate, long, or short meta-descriptions, or missing title tags, and any non-indexable content.

8. I’m honestly not so convinced of the value offered by the Webmaster Tools’ “Statistics” section, but go ahead and poke around if you are interested in general Page Ranking on your site, what search queries are leading to your site on Google, and general info about subscribers (if you have any - though I would recommend FeedBurner for gathering those stats if you’re serious about subscribers), or a list of indexed pages.

9. Ever wonder what pages on your site are being linked to externally? Check out the Links section of Webmaster Tools. You can also find out what Sitelinks appear for your site on Google’s search results pages. For more information on how to get sitelinks up for your site, or what the heck sitelinks are, you can read some theories on how to get sitelinks to appear.

10. Upload a robots.txt file to your site’s server if you want to prohibit Googlebots from crawling specific pages of your site. For example, block the bots from certain secure pages. Remember also to include a reference to the location of your sitemap in the robots.txt file.

11. You can generate and analyze your robots.txt file in the WM Tools “Tools” section.

And that about wraps up Webmaster Tools.

About the Author
Digital Age Dump is a collection of articles and insights on web 2.0, SEO, copywriting, and more to do with the evolving way we connect and communicate on the web.

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HTML formatted email can look just like a web page. We’re talking everything from layout, graphics, active links, colorful fonts, interactive form, charts you name it. Combined, this allows the customer to interact with the brand and its identity in a way that no other medium can offer. Needless to say Outlook Express, Netscape Communicator, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo and most popular email clients support HTML also.

Used properly graphics and visual imagery in ads can also be more effective. How? One way is through the use of related technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets that can better assist you in structuring such concepts as grouping.

Containment is the technique of tying related elements together with in a box. The box can either be visible (with a border or background color of some sort,) or it can be invisible which involves putting your material in close proximity and keeping a moat of while space around the group. Content is then laid out in a way that’s more visually appealing, and much easier to scan and navigate, than plain text email.

Such practices are invaluable when trying to get your most important points across, which isn’t always an easy task especially in terms of email. Grouping is also one of the main tools used by the brain to simplify a complex situation.

Creating an HTML email is simple, there are many advanced mailing list management script such as add2it mailman phplist that make it easier to write send and manage your HTML messages to your list of subscribers. Phplist in particular (which is what I use and recommend all my clients to use) is great for newsletters, publicity lists, notifications, and many other uses.

Phplist also has a built in WYSIWYG HTML editor that allows you to create and view your HTML message even before you send it out, though I prefer using an actual HTML editor like Dreamweaver to create my emails; kind of defeating the purpose you might say yet, I just think phplist is best suited to manage the actual message delivery system itself.

The Multiple List Management feature, for example, is great for if you need to have more than one list (as it lets you assign lists to List Managers, who can manage their users and lists,) likewise the Message Queue ensures that every subscriber gets the email message, and that no subscribers receive two copies of the same message, even if they’re subscribed to more than one list!

Similarly Dreamweaver is better suited to handle HTML as it provides a number of easy ways to display your images and control your text with style sheets in HTML.

Regardless of what HTML editor you choose here’s are few things to remember.

1 - Always use absolute URLS for your graphics (ie http://foamers.net/newsletter/pics/issue2.gif )

2 - Do not save your images as attachments (nobody in their right mind will ever open some strange attachment,) but store them on your web server so that they may display properly in the email.

3 - Send it to yourself before sending it to your subscriber list. And if possible send it to a buddy who has a different email program than you, to be sure most of your subscribers can read it on their computers.

4 - Once your satisfied with your newsletter, save it as a template. Then you can just open the template whenever you want to send html mail and most of the work will be done for you.

5 - If you still feel uncomfortable around HTML I highly recommend that you go on a multimedia or web design course just to get a feel for the fundamentals – and to pick the brains of other Internet entrepreneurs, which is always useful. One way to learn from us right here is simply to subscribe to this feed. And should you wish to have me customize your HTML email template newsletter (at just $180 a pop,) jump over to the contact form and tell me what you think.

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I had this idea where I wanted to share a little know how with you guys. So I’m opening up the floor, I’ll be selecting one template every now and again, and letting you guys ask me how to customize anything on that template or a similar template that you might be doing. With that I’m hoping to lure you out of the closet, so to speak, and get away from all the email back and forth about the same subject, I thought this might be a better way to address those questions having a nice open line of communications right here where anyone can comment. That way every question is open, not only to me but also to you too.

Anyhow, the template I had in mind is this new XML Flash Site, I thought this might be good to begin with as this is a fairly new product and seeing as some of you might not already be too familiar with Flash and XML.

I choose this one in particular because I thought it really practical in that it already came with a photo gallery and with it you can add a new picture or change the old ones all without ever needing to go into Flash itself. You only work with the XML file by opening it in something like wordpad or any other text editor and many times you wont even have to do that.

For example if you just wanted to edit one of the images on the template all you’d have to do is open the “site_flash” folder find the image you want to replace and simply substitute that picture with one of your own.

Here are some steps to follow. Number one you always need to name the new picture the same as the old (e.g. old file name was tfile_pic1.jpg new file must still be tfile_pic1.jp the same as it once was ) and make the new picture the same width and height as the original that way things wont get all out of porportune.

Secondly you’ll need to upload all the files from the template “site_flash” folder to your “public_html” or “www” folder on the server and keep everything in that folder.

See how easy that was, I didn’t even need to edit the XML file. So, if you really want to see how Flash and XML work together, specially if you are already working on a similar project, or maybe having difficulties or you just want to know more about editing your XML file this will be the perfect opportunity for you to get your hands dirty, ask for help, share your comments etcetera.

Now, how are you using this type of template? What part of the customization are you having the most problems with? What solutions have you come up with? And as always should you wish to acquire more information about my own template customization services simply jump over to the contact form and let me know what you’re thinking.

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