SoloSEO

Hey Businesses… Its about Blogging time.

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on September 7th, 2007

A good friend of mine, Thayne Peterson, called up yesterday and asked what he should do with his website to just help it perform a bit better. As you can imagine we get that question quite a bit around here, especially now that more people have kind of figured out what SoloSEO is about. This friend owns an auto dealership in Provo, UT (free link alert) and deals mostly in high-quality, used BMWs. He also has a repair shop as well, where they specialize in repairing most German made cars (this needs to be stated more clearly on the website). He, like many of us, just wants to be a bit more visible online.

In our conversation he mentioned he was considering signing up for a local online business directory, and perhaps purchasing some advertising on their site. He wondered if I thought it was a good idea, so I took a look. After some initial poking around, it was soon obvious that signing up was free, and the site existed solely on ad space it sold on the site. So I had no problem with him signing up, at least it is a new link to him, and this directory is well put together and has quite a comprehensive overview of local business, organized by category. I didn’t tell him if I thought purchasing an ad on this site was a good move or not, I don’t know enough about this directory’s traffic mix, or his business to understand if online advertising will provide a high enough ROI to make the ad price worth the investment. I will leave that decision to him.

But after a quick review of his site, I just gave him a few ideas that I think will help its performance in the search engines. First off, he does an excellent job of keeping the inventory of current cars up to date. As soon as they receive a new car, they clean it up and takes some nice pictures of the car, and then put those up with a simple description of each car on the site. I suggested that they should spend a bit more time on creating content for each car, focusing more on some keywords they are targeting, as well as the specifics of each car. These keywords should come from what they feel their strengths are, with local references included, like Provo, UT, Northern Utah, 40 South of Salt Lake City, UT, as examples. Additionally, I would have them use SoloSEO tools to analyze other local automotive sites doing well in the search engines, and then start targeting those keywords as well. Finally, they should also make sure the photos for each car are labeled clearly, and using an occasional keyword here and there, in a picture description, isn’t going to hurt rankings either.

Once a car is sold, they currently take the content and the pictures of that car off the site. I think this is a mistake many of us make. Rather, I would suggest they create a sold page, or past inventory page, then organize all the cars by model and year on this sold/directory page. Keep all that content written about each car, and the descriptive photos for each in play for the search engines. If they spend time creating the content, then they should continue benefitting from it. Plus, it might help potential clients find a model of car they are looking for. Thayne does a great job finding cars according to a potential buyer’s specifications. He did this for me, and it worked out great. So, if a potential buyer found a car on Thayne’s site by browsing the past inventory, which takes no time from Thayne’s sales people (truly a major benefit of any well conceived site), and Thayne gets a new client to work with, along with all the specs he needs to find a similar car, it is a win/win for everyone.

Next, I would suggest they start a company blog, it is another easy way to add content. We of course love WordPress Blogging system, we use it ourselves, and highly recommend it to everyone. On the Independent Import’s blog I would have them blog about sales they are having on certain cars, about automotive tips, about information on recalls, about new performance parts or options to “pimp our rides,” and even about the new innovations BMW is coming out with all the time. The automotive industry is one of constant innovation and change, and this provides excellent and frequent topics for a blog. Keep the blog fresh, with one or two posts a week at least, and also let his current and new clients know about the blog. Many new car owners are passionate about their cars (especially BMW owners), and reading new info about their brand of car and possible improvements/options, is very interesting and will increase business. I’ll bet Thayne could get quite a good subscription base fairly quickly, I know I would sign up.

I would guess there are many of us who feel like we need to do better online. Our site is there, but we need it to perform better, if at all and bring us some new clients. This is most easily done through search. Look for ways to increase your content, adding new pages, and a blog. Then write about products, changes in the industry, and keep your content, don’t ever throw it away. It may need to be tweaked or placed on an archives page of some sort, but you worked hard to create it, let it continue to work for you, it will make a difference in search engine rankings. As far as all the free advice to Thayne, I will take it on trade for a M3 convertible, black… of course.

1 comment Visited 5170 times September 7th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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The Marketing 4 Ps and SEO

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on August 30th, 2007

Much of a discussion on marketing can be broken down into what is termed “The Marketing Mix, or the 4 Ps” namely; Product, Price, Place, Promotion. Product being the service or product we sell, Price being the retail price a customer will pay for the product, Place being the locale where the product is purchased and Promotion being how we get our message out to the masses, and what we attempt to communicate in order to convince them to buy. The goal of a marketer then is to properly address the 4 Ps for their specific situation and to sell as many units of product as is potentially possible.

The online world is a bit of a different marketing animal. Some of the 4 Ps haven’t changed much, and others have. Our Product essentially remains the same. The Price is also not changed too much, although with increase access to information, and more access to online resellers, economists would expect at least a downward pressure on price, if not overall lower prices altogether. Place can also can be a bit different, while many of us may still have a store front, there are some small business owners who only sell their products online. So presently, we either sell both online, and through a brick and mortar store front, or we just sell online which is a new spin on “Place.” Finally we have Promotion, which in some cases is very similar to how we promote offline. Using banners and Ads on webpages. As an example, at the top right of Andy’s Marketing Pilgrim home page, we see ads prominently displayed to Andy’s thousands of visitors. This can be a very good online advertising option, as we are able to target clients who we can predict visit sites with a certain theme, and we have a degree of control on the content, color and message of our ad. Advertising our revolutionary new socks for example, on a site developed to provide marathon running tips to novice runners would predictably be a good advertising opportunity/match.

In online promotion we also have the opportunity to start an ad campaign and purchase ad space on search engine results pages. Both Yahoo and Google have programs for doing this. So if we search for “marathon running” in about any search engine, we will not only have organic or unpaid results, typically found in the center of the page, but we will also see a column of paid ads down the right hand, and sometimes even across the top of our results page. Again this type of advertising allows marketers to target potential clients they believe would be most interested in their product. However, these results page ads are frightfully limiting compared to other forms of both online and offline marketing. The ads all look the same in color and size, there are limitations on what can be stated, and on how many words can be used to get the message across. So it is much more difficult to really stand out through ads on a results page, I personally rarely look at these ads. Imagine driving down a Freeway with all the billboards having a white background, with an underlined blue heading (sometimes it may be bolded, wow!), black text of approximately 10 words, and a green URL link at the bottom, that’s it. Not many keen marketers would pay the billboard owners for such a poor advertising opportunity, but it may be a good way to get rid of all the billboards. Now, I am not a big supporter of billboards in the first place, in fact, they don’t make much sense to me at all. It has nothing to do with whether they work or not from a marketing perspective, I just don’t understand why we want these colorful distractions taking the attention of drivers moving along at 70 mph, with other distracted drivers all around them. It seems smarter to keep all the attention focused on the road, hey, maybe billboards painted right on the road? And don’t tell me these billboards are mainly for the car passengers, the HOV lanes around the country prove there aren’t many passengers in all those cars.

Anyway, to make standing out or ranking well on search engines results page even seems more difficult, when we learned earlier this summer from Google’s Udi Manber, that 25% of all search queries are brand new, and never have been used previously. So how to do we target those evolving clients?

In this apparent increasing difficulty in search engine marketing, we should really be seeing an opportunity to become specialists at anticipating the keywords our clients will use to find what they need. I see a very interesting research project here. It would be cool to analyze the behavior of a test group when they are all given the same, random items to search for online. It would be amazing to see how each would construct their query to best find what were looking for. It is this intellectual process we need to focus upon as online marketers and small business owners, how potential clients are conjuring up their searchers, what is the basis of their search, how do current events and trends influence their queries? With these questions in mind, creation of new keyword phrases will keep things fresh and relevant. We need to remember that due to the thousands of pages thrown on the Internet each day, the process of search has become quite different and more complex. Many of us understand that our searches need to be more detailed in order for us to truly find what we want, quickly. Searchers actually use long-tailed, localized keyword searches to get around the garbage Wikipedia like pages, and the miserable “informational” websites only created to rake in Adsense revenue. My average search queries are now at least 5 words, and usually contain a localization aspect to them.

So if we are mindful that 25% of search queries are new, and potential clients are using longer and longer tailed searches to find what they need, then we understand our creative juices really need to get flowing to benefit from the new long-tailed keywords trend. And we need to be addressing these long tail keywords possibilities for all our sites on a regular basis. Whether we create a new web page, change some product descriptions, or add a blog post using our new keyword phrases, it needs to be done. It is actually quite amazing how quickly one can rank number 1 when the keyword phrases used are unique and well placed. And many will be surprised when some of these phrases not only start bringing in new clients for the specific phrase, but also start ranking well for just portions of the original long-tail phrase originally created.

Add comment Visited 3754 times August 30th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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SEO – Vital to Small Business

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on August 7th, 2007

To small business owners, SEO cannot be seen as the “end all – be all” to their potential success, but it rightfully should be considered a “must do” in order to maximize their full business potential. Based on our own situation, and finally deciding ourselves we needed to spend time on SEO, we now understand that getting started in SEO can be a bit intimidating, and very confusing without the right information. The SEO world tends to speak in their own tongue, and their language wasn’t developed, or taught in any business classes I attended. These new terms, whether it was meant to be this way or not, seem to have created a bit of a “barrier to entry,” to use a term we are more familiar with. Essentially the SEO industry created an illusion of “if we don’t know the terminology, it will be difficult to understand or perform SEO, and even tougher to do it well.” I felt the same way at first, but that perception is simply not true. SEO done the right way, without all the tricks and tinkering (which isn’t all that effective anymore anyway), is actually pretty straight forward. Just as simple as learning about credits and debits in Accounting or how supply and demand affect pricing in Economics. Not too tough to understand with a little reading and some hands-on exercises.

So if SEO is important, and we can learn it, how much time should we spend on SEO as a small business owner? It is an excellent question, and ultimately depends on how much business a firm hopes to bring in through their online efforts. For example, if a firm has in mind that in 12 months they would like to have 50% of their sales coming from online sources, and they currently only enjoy 5% of total sales from the site, then they should probably spend a considerable amount of time working on the site, making sure all the pieces are in place, so not only will the site’s visibility improve, but potential clients will be happy with what they find. Conversely, if this firm wants only 50% of their sales from online sources, but they now enjoy 60% of total being online generated, then they should focus more attention on more traditional forms of marketing and advertising until this ratio changes.

To get started in SEO, I would recommend just setting aside an hour a day to dive in. At first start just by learning about SEO, either from some pretty good books on the topic here and here, or through a number of blogs we recommend to our readership, namely: Michael Gray (GrayWolf), Todd Malicoat (StuntDubl), Lee Odden (Online Marketing Blog), Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz), and Brian Clark (CopyBlogger). These books and blogs will provide good insight and instruction on the ins and outs of all aspects of SEO.

Once one has a basic grasp of SEO, they really should get themselves an account with SoloSEO, in order to put this knowledge to use, using the most comprehensive set of SEO tool on the web. Much like exercises in Accounting and Economics, actually using the tools, and seeing the results of your work, drives home the SEO concepts, and puts the finishing touches on the learning process. Through working with SoloSEO’s tools, a solid understanding of the pillars of SEO, namely keywords, links and content will form, and SEO will then seem not only doable, but pretty simple.

So once we understand what SEO “is,” then it is time to really understand our industry online, and review what our competitor’s are up to. This online Competitive Analysis can also be done using some of SoloSEO’s tools and reports. We must remember we are competing within a different marketplace, with new competitors, and how they have positioned their sites online, could and should influence how we position and optimize our sites today and in the future. There is not a pre-determined set of guidelines at this point for SEO, no matter what some might say, much of what we need to do to compete most effectively online will be determined by what our competitors have done and will do in the future. While the process of SEO is standardized, the focus of our specific SEO strategy will need to be flexible to face the challenges put forth by our online competitors. If we watch what they do, and manage our online SEO accordingly, then we can keep pace or outpace what they are attempting to do, and better our online exposure.

In my mind there isn’t a business out there today which cannot benefit from an online presence, especially a site that is well prepared, and skillfully promoted. Small business owners need to take every advantage, use every possible tool and strategy available, to insure their eventual, or continued success. I can think of nothing more vital, more accessible and more easily implemented (not to mention more affordable) than SEO. A site which runs well, and effectively targets the right potential clients, promotes a firm’s image in a positive way, while making sales, even while we sleep, or while we play golf (not that anyone would do this during business hours). Take the time to get to know SEO and you will quickly understand just how big your little company can become, and that realization can be quite jolt.

2 comments Visited 4397 times August 7th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Why You Should Love Yahoo! Answers

Posted by Michael D Jensen on July 6th, 2007

Just over a year ago Danny sullivan said “Look out Wikipedia, Here Comes Yahoo! Answers”. Yahoo! Answers is becoming not only a great resource, but also a social network (who isn’t, right?). I like Yahoo! Answers because people ask real questions and often get a handful or more of responses.

Sometimes links are all about ranking, but in this case you can get a good flow of traffic (Matt McGee on why he loves it) from a bona fide link on Yahoo! Answers. Every time I’ve jumped onto Yahoo! Answers, I’ve had a fun time. Not only responding, but also reading other people’s comments and questions.

Yahoo! Answers Made Easy

For starters, let’s make following your favorite topic really easy on Yahoo! Answers. They have a RSS feed, just like this blog and other blogs, that you can subscribe to and watch as new questions are asked.

http://answers.yahoo.com/rss/searchq?p=seo

Let’s say you are interested in GPS gadgets (i.e. you have a site/blog for GPS gadgets):

http://answers.yahoo.com/rss/searchq?p=gps

The name of the game is get there first (or early) and answer the question. If you answer it well, correctly, and in a thorough manner, chances are you get most of the attention and are selected as the best answer. Then “forever” afterwards if that search comes up in the SERPs you’ve got a great chance of getting some traffic.

The best way to use Yahoo! Answers is to primarily be there to help others. If you have something on your site or blog that is helpful, then point them to it. If not, point them somewhere else. A good mix of those would be very natural.

Do you ever have a hard time figuring out what to write? Why not take a question, or part of an answer to someone’s question, and expand it on your blog? Better yet, answer someone’s question on your blog (quickly) and then add it as a response!

10 comments Visited 10260 times July 6th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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How To Tell iPhone Visitors in Google Analytics

Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 30th, 2007

You’re either sick of hearing about the iPhone or you eat up anything said about it. I have gadgetitis, and so does Aaron, so we’ll be getting iPhones next week. If you’re a Mac user, the iPhone is a heaven sent, despite what others are saying. I’ve tried the Sidekick, Blackberry, and the Treo, all of which either didn’t sync or really had a lame attempt at syncing with my Mac. Plus, the interface for the phones has been clunky and 1990s at best.

First off, if you’re interested in iPhone visitors you may want to consider creating an application. I created my first iPhone application that so far I have called iPhone Scriptures (yes, I’m religious ). I read from the scriptures every day and I like to have them with me when I have a spare moment to read. Since the iPhone doesn’t allow for 3rd party applications (you know, when you load those on your Treo et al then it starts crashing) except through the browser, I figured I had better just build my own. I found a database of the scriptures and made a quick and simple AJAX interface. It’s not perfect, but it will improve over time (and especially after I get my iPhone!). You can see what it might look like on an iPhone simulation.

iPhone Visitors in Google Analytics

From initial Google Analytics data from my iPhone app, it looks like the only way to distinguish the iPhone from other Macs is through the screen resolution, which is 320 x 396. You would think there would be some further distinguishing, but not so far. I looked at the browsers, OS, hostnames, and network locations but could not distinguish the group of iPhone visitors through any of those.

So to check for iPhone visitors, open up Google Analytics, go to Visitors, then to Browser Capabilities, then to Screen Resolution. Look for 320 x 396. You may be asking (if you are a crazy iPhone maniac like me) why not 320 x 480? The viewable area of the browser goes down to 396 in height with the address bar area, etc.

Google Analytics is always a bit delayed, so I haven’t seen a bunch of traffic yet. Plus, I’m sure reading the New Testament on your new iPhone probably isn’t on the top of most people’s lists for discovering its cool features. For anyone with a new iPhone, I found this cool application (well designed, much better than mine) that works as a home page for accessing all the different iPhone apps.

8 comments Visited 19609 times June 30th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Learn SEO Basics: Anchor Text of Inbound Links

Posted by Michael D Jensen on May 29th, 2007

Anchor text for inbound links is one of the most important factors in search engine optimization. According to SEOmoz’ search engine ranking factors (v2), anchor text is the 2nd most important positive factor.

“The text people use to link to you is one of the most important factors — often the most important factor — for how you will rank in Google.” (Danny Sullivan, Mar 15, 2007)

Now that I have your attention, let’s learn about anchor text, and how to benefit from this very important factor.

What is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the visible text of a link. For example, if I was going to link to a friend’s blog, I might use his name for the anchor text.

Check out Todd Malicoat’s blog.

If I wanted to make the most out of my link for Todd, I would use a nice keyword for my anchor text, for example:

Check out Todd Malicoat’s blog on SEO Consulting.

Todd ranks pretty well already for SEO consulting. If you check the anchor text for his backlinks, he has tons of links for “SEO Consultant” and “SEO Consulting”. If you do a search in Google for “SEO Consultant”, notice how the words “SEO Consulting” get highlighted as well. The words are very related and mean about the same thing, and so Todd is going to rank well for both of those terms. Obviously the anchor text of the link is not the SOLE reason Todd ranks well, but it is a major reason.

The Power of Anchor Text

Many examples show the power of anchor text, but here is one simple one:

Computers

Skip the wikipedia result and look at the Dell result. If you view Dell’s homepage you don’t see the word “computer” anywhere. When you view the source you can find the word “computer” just one time, in the meta tag for keywords. Obviously that doesn’t have the power to get it to that kind of ranking. If you check the anchor text of its backlinks you’ll notice a lot of their backlinks use the text “Dell Computers” or something with the word “computer” in it.

How do I use Anchor Text to benefit my SEO?

Any link building efforts should start with keyword analysis, identifying the keywords you want to rank better for. There are several tools for keyword research, including our Keyword Finder tool in SoloSEO that lets you find keywords from Overture, WordTracker, and Google Adwords all at once and to compare the results side by side.

Link building comes in many forms. Whether you’re requesting links from other sites, submitting to directories, or buying links, it is important to make the most out of your link by choosing the right anchor text. If you are requesting links from others, have the code for your link all ready to go, easy for them to insert into their webpage.

Keep in mind that having all of your anchor text the exact same from all your links may not be the best approach. Try mixing it up by adding a word, changing from singular to plural, or stemming a word differently. Just like above, Google considers “Consulting” and “Consultant” to be very related, enough that they would highlight the other word even though it doesn’t match your search term.

Some other articles on the topic

How to Link to Your Friends, by Todd Malicoat

The Power of Anchor Text, by John Chow (more like Google Bombing, but the Googlebombing algorithm hasn’t hurt him yet)

Aaron Wall’s post about the depreciation of anchor text

V7N discusses link vs content and the ending is a great quote (spoiler alert? hehe):

PageRank does matter. In fact, anchor text and inbound links is 95% of effective search engine optimization. Anyone who tells you otherwise does not practice real search engine optimization.

Subscribe to our RSS feed for my upcoming follow-up post about advanced tips for ways to control anchor text of inbound links, and ways to get more of them.

19 comments Visited 24687 times May 29th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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The Perfect Solution to Paid Link Disclosure

Posted by Michael D Jensen on April 16th, 2007

There is a big brouhaha over Matt Cutt’s recent postings (yes, 3 of them) about the disclosure of paid links (big one here, another here, and one more here). There’s been a lot of postings about it, with a great summary here by GrayWolf at SEOclass.com, some here by GrayWolf at Wolf-Howl.com, more here from Todd Malicoat of StuntDubl.com, more here from Matt McGee of SmallBusinessSEM.com, and another here from Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim.com.

Essentially, Google wants you to disclose paid links to both users and to search engines. Google wants to know which links are “paid” instead of “natural” so they can discount their weight.

My feeling about it is this: Paid links are advertisements, and as such should be distinguished in some way from other links that are not advertisements. The disclosure should not be deceptive to users or to search engines. Disclosure can be subtle and is okay to be undetectable (not deceptively) to search engines/machines.

Google’s own webmaster guidelines specifically discusses that we should not do things specifically for search engines, but focus on the users:

Make pages for users, not for search engines … Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

If we look at other forms of marketing and advertising, there must be disclosure for advertisements. If you read a newspaper, it reads “This is a Paid Advertisement” somewhere on/near the ad. If you watch infomercials, it says “This is a Paid Advertisement”. If you listen to the radio and hear a political ad, it is disclosed as a political ad. If you look at Adwords and other text ads by search engines it has some form of disclosure, like “Ads by Google”. If you see a banner ad, well it either screams “I’m an ad” because it’s an image and it looks like an ad, or it says “Advertisement” somewhere. These advertising property owners do not make these statements because they are pretty or interesting, but to obey laws for advertising disclosure.

And now, for what you all have been waiting for…

The Perfect Solution to Paid Link Disclosure

So, I have the perfect solution for you to disclose your paid links to users and not search engines, that anyone can implement quickly and easily. This method makes it virtually impossible for a machine to implement an algorithm based on this code, but makes it fully disclosed to users.

To see the paid link disclosure in action, click on the following link (the next page has the link examples):

SEE EXAMPLE PAID LINK DISCLOSURE HERE

How to implement Paid Link Disclosure

Step 1

Copy the CSS code below and paste it in your existing CSS file for your site. (or create one, or put it in the template of your site so it shows up on each page).

a:hover.linkx {
    background-image: url(/images/solop.gif);
    background-repeat:no-repeat;
    padding-left:10px;
}
a:hover.linky {}

Step 2

Change the name “linkx” to something else and don’t include words like paid or ad or affiliate. This keeps variability from site to site and gives it no semantic meaning. “linky” can be changed to something else also, but essentially all that is doing is giving your other links a class so that all links have a class assigned to it and cannot be “filtered” based on having a class attribute.

Step 3

Create an image that in some way reflects that the link is paid. Don’t just copy my $ image here, use a unique image and rename the filename to something else (keep it ambiguous). You may want to use a star, an asterisk, an exclamation point, or a turtle. It should be unique to you so again there is no regularity for the search engines, but at the same time it gives appropriate disclosure to your users. Place this image file behind the folder you created in step 4.

Step 4

Create a folder (give it any name, just be creative) and disallow search engines from access to this folder (learn how to do this in your Robots.txt file). No this is not deceptive, you just don’t want them to go there. This is for step 5.

Step 5

Create a file in the directory you just created and include a disclosure about paid links, describing that you disclose paid links by using an image icon next to links when a user mouses over them. I wouldn’t even include the icon on the page, just describe it with text, like “A dollar sign icon will appear when you mouse over a paid link”.

Step 6

Add the class attribute that you renamed in Step 2 above to the anchor tag of your paid links and any new paid links.

This solution would be incredibly difficult, and I would go as far as to say “impossible”, for Google and others to detect on a wide scale basis (which is what they face). Their problem is that this code is ambiguous, and could be doing any number of things besides attributing a paid link, and so they cannot fully determine that it is actually a paid link based on the CSS itself. But you’re still being ethical because users are aware before they click on the link that it is a paid link.

If you want to disclose paid links without having to hover, just modify the CSS code above and take out the “hover” part (see live page here of it in action):

a.linkx {
    background-image: url(/images/solop.gif);
    background-repeat:no-repeat;
    padding-left:10px;
}
a.linky {}

If you have any improvements or other suggestions, add them to the comments below.

UPDATE: Matt McGee gives his idea for a solution, which is quite novel too.

13 comments Visited 7501 times April 16th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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How to Configure Sitemap Autodiscovery in Robots.txt

Posted by Michael D Jensen on April 12th, 2007

At Search Engine Strategies New York it was announced that you can now have your sitemap automatically discovered by configuring it in your Robots.txt file. It is simple and easy to do, you’ll just need to know the URL or web address of your sitemap.

First, open your Robots.txt file on your server for editing. Then you will need to add the following line to the end of the file (it can be anywhere, but the end is probably a good place).

Sitemap: http://www.mydomain.com/sitemap.xml

Save the Robots.txt file with the new line for the sitemap URL. There you go! Your whole file may look something like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /somefolder/
Disallow: /somethingelse/
Sitemap: http://www.soloseo.com/sitemap.php

Search engines already come to your Robots.txt file when they visit your domain, so on their next crawl they will automatically find your sitemap file.

If you have a new site/domain you will probably still want to submit the sitemap URL to the search engines. To submit you can either submit the URL through their interfaces or use a ping.

Submit Sitemap to Google or Ping Google with your Sitemap
Submit Sitemap to Yahoo or Ping Yahoo with your Sitemap
Submit Sitemap to MSN Live.com
Info for Ask.com Sitemaps or Ping Ask.com by hitting this address: http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

10 comments Visited 19374 times April 12th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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