Marketing Strategy

Part One: What They Are, The Benefits, and Building with Screaming Frog

When having a conversation about XML sitemaps (it’s more exciting than you think), it’s pretty common to think about a style-less page within a website containing all relevant links on it so that search engine robots can more intelligently “crawl” the site, making it easier for them to include you in SERPs. This is an integral part to search engine optimization, as sitemaps serve as a way to communicate directly with search engines, notifying them of new or changed website content to ensure that it is indexed correctly, and timely.

So we know the benefits of having an XML sitemap for web pages, but what about images? Another important part of SEO is optimizing images with appropriate alt text and file names, so shouldn’t we make sure that the same robots that are crawling our website and helping show up in search engines are doing the same for our images in image search engines (ex. Google Images)?

Well, that’s where image XML sitemaps come into play.

What Is an XML Image Sitemap?

Much (exactly) like sitemaps for web pages, sitemaps for images are style-less web pages that live on a site with several links listed on it. However, instead of showing information like a URL, the last modification date, the crawl frequency and priority like on traditional sitemaps, image sitemaps can communicate to robots:

• The type of image
• The subject matter
• Image alt text
• An image title
• A geographic location
• Etc.

Images can be added to an existing sitemap, or you can create a specific sitemap for the images on your site – the choice is entirely up to you. Personally, I prefer to go with the latter because there is an abundance of free third-party software that you can easily use to generate several kinds of sitemaps.

The Benefits of an Image XML Sitemap

Image sitemaps are incredibly useful if you want your images to show up in Google Image search results, and you do want this. Google receives hundreds of millions of image-related search queries every day. Now, if you own a plumbing, construction, or a kind of business where lots of images might not be found on your website, this fact might not mean a lot to you. If on the other hand, you own an e-commerce or other business where images are a key part of your website, I probably just caught your attention.

E-commerce companies are known for having websites that are especially image-rich. If this sounds like you and the images on your website are a) not optimized for organic search and/or b) not included in an XML image sitemap, there is a very good chance that you’re missing out on valuable traffic that you deserve. Not good!

If images make up a large portion of your website, either from product galleries or other resources, I strongly recommend incorporating an image XML sitemap.

Creating An Image XML Sitemap

Here at Treefrog, we use Screaming Frog SEO Spider, a tool provided by Screaming Frog that collects website data and identifies technical issues that could be detrimental to your SEO efforts. To follow along, I recommend you download a free copy of Screaming Frog SEO Spider.

Step One: Getting Comfortable with Screaming Frog

At first glance, the Screaming Frog SEO Spider dashboard can be somewhat intimidating, but not to worry because creating XML sitemaps doesn’t take more than a few clicks of the mouse.

Start getting familiar with the software by doing some exploring. Look at the various aspects of a website that Screaming Frog SEO Spider has access to.

Once you feel comfortable, copy and paste the full URL of the website you would like to crawl into the search bar at the top of the dashboard. As an example, I’ll crawl our company website. Click the “start” button to begin crawling.

Step Two: Creating The Sitemap File

Depending on the size of the website you are trying to crawl, this may take a matter of seconds or minutes. It’s worth mentioning that the free version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a 500 URL crawl limit.

Once Screaming Frog SEO Spider has finished crawling the website, make your way to the top menu and look for “Sitemaps”. Hover over it, and then select “create images sitemap”.

Next, a series of windows labeled “Images Sitemap Export Configuration” will appear. This is to help you set up the sitemap. You will be able to control what pages get included, the priority of the pages, and finally what images to include on the sitemap.XML file. As a default, only internal HTML pages with “200” status codes will be included in the sitemap file. Typically I leave these settings alone, but it’s always good to double check. Once you are happy with the settings, click “next” to generate the sitemap file (Seriously, it’s that easy).

Rename your file to “images_sitemap-(client name).xml and simply save it to your desktop.

… And you’re done! You have just successfully created an images_sitemap.xml file that you can easily upload to your server to get noticed by search engines. In my next post, I’ll go over how to upload your sitemap.xml file to your server using FileZilla, and how to submit it to Google Search Console for proper indexing. If you have any questions about image XML sitemaps or SEO in general, feel free to contact the SEO Team!

Be warned: if Google finds duplicate content, a spike will come out of the internet and impale your website horribly.

Frightened? Many are. But they shouldn’t be.

Duplicate Content Is Necessary

Let’s consider for a moment that Google, or at least some of the higher ups that hold sway at Google such as this guy, state that every website in the universe has some form of duplicate content on it. Think of press releases, blog quoting, product descriptions between manufacturers and dealers… some duplicate content is just natural. If Google were to drop the hammer on all of this content—i.e. implement a “duplicate content penalty” for any duplicate content it came across—it would make a whole lot of content syndicators really grumpy. Google often doesn’t care about making people grumpy—what it does care about is user experience, because users are the ones who click on ads.

On that note, it’s frustrating for a user to see a bunch of webpages in a search result with exactly the same content. Users like to see diverse angles and opinions on a given topic.

It comes back to user experience. We have to think of why the content is duplicated. Is there a logical and justifiable reason? If so, Google will most likely understand. Google has also given us a number of tools to use to properly outline why the content is duplicated.

The Duplicate Content Penalty

A myth that needs to be cleared up is this: there is no “duplicate content penalty”. Although in extreme situations, websites with a ton of duplicate content (hundreds of pages) have been the victim of a manual action. If Google thinks your site is trying to hone in on ranking by posting myriad pages all about the same topic, with identical content, then the skies may open up and Google will smite thee.

If you have content on your website that is the same as other pages on the same site—a paragraph or two let’s say—then you needn’t worry. As long as there is a clear and logical reason for that content to exist, you’ll be fine.

That being said, Google provides us with the necessary tools to identify and categorize our content so there’s no question about why it exists. I’ve listed some examples of these tools below.

Where Canonicalization Fits In

What the blue hell is “canonicalization”? Well, let’s say you have a product that comes in various colours. Your website may have a different webpage for that product in each colour available, which would make for several pages with the same text (describing the product) with minor differences. To keep this organized, it makes sense to define one solitary page that you wish to show up in a Google search for that product. In this case, it is best to use a practice that no one can pronounce, called “canonicalization”. N.B. I’ve actually heard this term referred to as “chocolization”, and I didn’t have the heart to correct the client.

Canonicalization basically means picking a leader. Consider a clone army. You have a bunch of clones (webpages with the same content, only minor differences, like colour red versus blue) and you only want one to step up to the plate and represent. So, you’d canonicalize all those other peon clones towards the leader. The leader will get all the authority, and she’ll be the one putting herself out there in a search result for the world to see. You’ll need to go through the leader in order to get to all of the other clones. If Google has to choose between too many webpages as the authority, it will just get bored and go acquire another company.

Point being, canonicalization will help define for Google the reason for the duplication. You have a better shot of ranking with the one authoritative leader than with several identical pages all competing for the same keywords.

Canonicalization for Pagination

Let’s say you have an article on your website that spans multiple pages. There’s a tag you can implement to tell Google that you want the first page of the article to rank, not all of the subsequent pages.

The tag is used to signal to Google that there’s a logical sequence to the order of the content.

Users wouldn’t benefit from seeing all the internal pages of an article in a search result; why would you want to start reading an article on page 3? The pagination tag allows you to indicate to Google that you’re aware the article has multiple pages, but you only need page one (the leader) to show up in a search result.

301 Redirects?

We’re not going to get into explaining 301 redirects here, but I mention them simply to point out that canonicalization and redirects are two very different things.

Put simply, you use a redirect if you want to route users and search engines to a new location for the content (a change of address). You use canonicalization when you need all the pages to still be accessible by users. The canonical tag is meant to indicate to search engines that you’re aware the content is very similar across those pages, and you only want the “leader” to show up in a search result.

Key things to remember

We need to keep in mind that canonical tags are a recommendation to Google. Whether Google actually follows this recommendation or not is another story. In other words, I can recommend that a train not hit me if I’m standing in the middle of the tracks, but there’s no guarantee it will listen. In Google’s own words, these tags are used as “hints”, not absolute directives.

Is there a good reason for the duplication? If you’re asking whether something will be perceived as duplicate content, put yourself in the mind of the user. Would someone expect the content to be there? If there’s a good reason for the duplicate content to exist, then we should be in good shape. Where we can apply one of the above tags as a hint to Google, then let’s do that.

There is no duplicate content penalty. Google will not shoot your website in the face if it crawls duplicate content. Will SEO tools pick up on duplicate content as a potential negative ranking signal? Sure. But again, let’s think of why the content is duplicated in the first place. If there’s a perfectly good reason for it to be there, then we should be good.

Unique, original content is always best. There are some cases where you may feel compelled to duplicate content. I’ve seen some clients copy and paste text from a source and use it on their own site. I would not ever recommend you do this. Best case scenario is to write your own version of that content so it’s original. Cite the original source of the content with a genuine link. That’s far more natural than simply copying the content.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any questions.

More quality reading about canonicalization

More about duplicate content:

• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359
• https://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content

More about chocolization:

101 Information

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for having a prominent web presence and attracting more visitors to your website. People primarily use search engines to find what they need on the web, including your products and services. You need to be visible on search result pages in order to be found by prospective clients.

SEO is about maximizing the quality of your web pages on multiple levels so that they can be properly indexed by search engines. Search engines have a variety of criteria they look for in a website. Google’s search ranking algorithm changes over 500 times a year, to give you an indication of its complexity.

Ultimately, search engines are looking for the best answer to a searcher’s question. If your site provides the best answer, and it is also technically sound, and if several other websites are linking to it as an authority on a given subject, your changes of ranking will be higher than a site that has none of these things going for it.

The SEO Process

There’s no way to summarize all the intricacies of SEO in a single post. That would be like fitting War and Peace onto one piece of foolscap. The following general tips can help you to attain higher organic search engine raking and maximize traffic to your website.

Determine the best keywords to win relevant traffic. Keywords are the words and phrases that people use to search for information, so you want to select terms that are specific to your business, and write content to reflect those terms so that people can find your pages.

Create original, quality, useful content for all web pages. Use your keywords naturally and with an appropriate density (i.e. use them in a meaningful way; search engines don’t like overstuffed keywords). Including keywords in page titles can also be advantageous to your ranking. If your content is good enough, then other sites may even link to it, and these backlinks can be beneficial to search engine ranking.

Continuously add new and fresh content. Encourage visitors to come back again and again by giving them something new to read. Post multiple articles offering information about your products in a way that informs and educates. This content increases your site’s depth and expands potential visibility of your primary keywords.

Don’t forget the Metadata. Create unique, informative Meta Tags and Meta Descriptions for each page, so that you entice searchers to click on your page from search results.

Create on-site links. Make sure you have sufficient links from your content text to relevant pages throughout your website. This helps users find pages they may not have seen otherwise, and it helps crawlers identify authoritative pages on your site that are linked to often.

Navigation matters! Have a solid architecture to facilitate easy understanding and navigation, so that visitors and search engines can easily move around your site and find what they are looking for with as few clicks as possible. Adding a site map to your website is also recommended.

You should also submit the site map for your content-rich site to search engines or directories to make them aware of your site.

Professional search engine optimization (SEO) strategists use various tools to monitor ranking performance. As the search engines keep changing their search algorithms, SEO strategists have to be on their toes all the time, constantly monitoring the keywords and reworking the information, analyzing your website to keep it competitive in ranking results.

Among all other forms of marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) is integral in getting traffic to your website. Combining SEO engineering and quality content is the best path to ranking success.

Effective SEO isn’t solely about how your website ranks in an organic Google search

Search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to your company’s online presence. The purpose of SEO is to obtain high visibility for your website on Google, Bing, Yahoo! and elsewhere by ensuring it ranks on the first page of the organic searches people perform. In other words, SEO makes it easy for your customers to find you online.

An oft-misunderstood online marketing tactic, SEO is an increasingly vast and complex methodology, and it’s one of many crucial elements comprising a holistic digital marketing strategy. Search engines rank websites based on multiple factors; no one digital marketing method alone will rocket your website to the top of Google’s list and keep it there indefinitely, and that includes SEO.

The effectiveness of SEO is reliant on many other components and services including:

• Keyword analysis
• Social media marketing
• Effective email campaigns
• Strategic content campaigns

Done well, SEO can improve your search engine rankings, thereby increasing your website’s organic traffic, and in turn, helping you score new customers, earn more revenue, and realize a high return on your SEO investment. But understand SEO isn’t only about your site’s ranking. One of your webpages may be ranking well for a keyword you’ve identified as relevant to your business, but if visitors to that webpage aren’t finding what they need quickly upon arrival, they’ll “bounce” or go elsewhere. Thus, user engagement is a major factor in Google’s determination of the value of any website. If large volumes of visitors are leaving your website rapidly, it will hurt your overall SEO ranking in the long run.

Research from multiple sources has quantified the value SEO provides for companies in both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) industry verticals. For instance, when conducting online procurement research an estimated 89% of B2B professionals start with a generic search. From a B2C perspective, about 72% of consumers who perform an organic search for a specific product or service visited a store or business within 8 kilometres of their location, and four out of five consumers use a search engine to find businesses in their vicinity.

However, like all things within the realm of business, there is no magic wand to wave that will produce instantaneous results. SEO involves research and analysis. Among the first steps to improving your site’s SEO ranking requires what’s known as an SEO discovery and audit session. It helps to determine which of your webpages are ranking as per targeted keywords, which ones aren’t, and what needs to be done to improve overall performance.

“Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.”
– ALBERT SZENT-GYÖRGYI DE NAGYRÁPOLT

Learning about Your Business and Customers

Before an in-depth site audit is performed to gauge the health of your website’s current SEO ranking and how it can be improved, a pre-audit discovery session is required. An integral part of an effective SEO strategy, the purpose of a discovery session is straightforward: it sets the stage for an organized, useful, and strategic audit.

There are five things an SEO discovery session should include:

• A comprehensive client interview. We need to learn about your business and industry and your products and services. We need to know who your existing, and prospective customers are, the lexicon you and they use, how and where they connect with you online, and what’s driving online conversions or sales today.
• Determining what your goals are. A goal without a plan is but a wish. Setting realistic, executable goals serves two important functions: it clarifies what it is you want to achieve with your website, and how compiled data should be measured.
• Access to real-time analytics. Assuming your company uses Google Analytics to track how online traffic arrives at your site, how long visitors dwell on your webpages, and whether they buy or bounce. The more historical data you can provide, the better it is during the audit phase and for plotting your future. If your business uses or has used Google AdWords, the data it can provide helps paint a more complete picture of your website’s performance to date.
• What keywords you think are best and why. Forget about your current SEO ranking for the time being. In the discovery session, we need to have a clear understanding of the keywords you think are relevant to your business, and why you think your customers would use those keywords to search for your products and services.
• The quality of your site’s current content. How often do you refresh your website’s content? What is the quality of the content on your site? Your content needs to be well-written, impactful, and it should accurately and succinctly articulate what benefits your business and products provide. If it’s rife with spelling errors, poor grammar, and rambling, incoherent jargon, it will severely diminish your SEO ranking.

Auditing Your Website

With the discovery session complete, we conduct a thorough SEO audit of all of your web properties, and subsequently, provide you with the details of that review and our strategic recommendations that are tailored to your company’s needs.

Our SEO audits and assessments typically include:

• Competitive intelligence on your competitors
• Keyword analysis and recommended targeted keywords
• Reconfiguring your Google Analytics and AdWords to reap more insightful data
• Local search optimization for Google My Business and other directories
• Gauging your site’s mobile responsiveness and how mobile search impacts your SEO
• The usefulness of your inbound links versus your competitors’
• Recommendations about your site as a whole to improve engagement and increase visitor conversions

An in-depth SEO audit and discovery session takes the guesswork out of what resonates with your existing and potential customers, and it helps to determine a path forward based on data and your business’s strategic goals. It also lays the foundation for building your ongoing marketing plan to ensure you’ve got inspiring and effective content and messaging, a high-quality, responsive web presence, and above all, a compelling reason for the world to land on your pages first and foremost.

Do you have questions about SEO and its effectiveness in conjunction with other digital marketing methodologies? Talk to us. Whether your company is big or small, a startup or a recognized brand, we have the expertise and the experience to optimize your site and boost your website traffic.