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This is the thirdpart of a series where I will be discussing startup SEO tips. In Part 1 you can find five tips on, analytics, title tag, keywords, meta descriptions and valid XHTML compliance. In Part 2 you can find tips on HTML and XML Sitemaps. These tips are aimed for people and businesses with a startup SEO campaign and not intended for the company that requires hardcore exposure on the web. Browse to our website at http://www.opencircle.co.za if you require a more tailor made SEO solution.

Index:

* Part 1
* Part 2
* Part 3
* Part 4
* Part 5

Part 3

In Part 2 I discussed sitemaps and that search engine bots crawl XML sitemaps easier than HTML sitemaps. But now you have created your XML Sitemap, now what? In the next section I will explain what you can do with your sitemap and where to submit it for the best results.

1. Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools helps you see how your site is performing in Google’s search results, troubleshoot potential problems, and build Google-friendly sites. With the Webmaster tools you can see “Web Crawl” errors the Google bot has experienced when crawling your site (broken links, http errors and sitemap errors).

Find below the address of Google Webmasters (You need a Google Account to access the Tools)

* http://www.google.com/webmasters/

You can view diagnostics for your website, statistics that includes your websites top search queries (only in Google), indexed stats, crawl stats and subscriber stats. You can even view statistics on what the Google bot sees about your website.

On the Webmasters tool is a dedicated section called “Sitemaps”. On this section you can enter the url of where your XML Sitemap is situated for the Google bot to crawl. Once you have entered the url it takes a couple of hours for the bot to crawl your sitemap and it shows how many pages it has found in the sitemap. After the bot has crawled your sitemap it will show you the status of the sitemap as well as the number of pages in the sitemap and how many pages found on your sitemap is indexed by Google.

The Google bot doesn’t crawl your sitemap only once. This tool also shows you the date when the Google crawled your XML Sitemap and it is quite usefull when you have a large site with regular fresh content to see if the new content has been indexed.

2. Yahoo Site Explorer
Yahoo Site Explorer is similar to Google Webmasters and they have a section called “Feeds”. On this section you can enter the url of your XML Sitemap (Feed) for the Yahoo bots to crawl your sitemap. I have noticed that it takes a bit longer for the Yahoo bot to crawl your sitemap.

On Yahoo Site Explorer you can also view a couple of statistics regarding your website. Crawled pages, Known pages, external and internal links are also shown on the statistics section.

Find below the address of Yahoo Site Explorer (You need a YahooAccount to access the Site Explorer)

* https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

3. MSN Webmaster Centre
MSN has a tool that shows basic statistics for your website. It shows crawl issues, backlinks, outbound links, keywords and sitemaps associated with your website. On the Sitemaps section you can add the url of your website but it doesn’t have a function where you can see how many of the pages found in the sitemap are indexed by MSN.

I have never had much success with MSN so I just stick to the tools provided by Google and Yahoo.

The Google Webmasters Tool and Yahoo Site Explorer are great tools that you can use to further enhance your website. You can view the number of indexed pages of your website and errors found on the links.

Watch this space for Part 4.