A sitemap is more than just a list of links on your website that makeup the “site” , it’s an easy way for the search engines to get a taste of what your site is about.

First, Create your Sitemap

If you need help creating your initial sitemap, there’s a lot of free sitemap generators out there to get you started with your initial XML sitemap.  After you create your sitemap, save it to your website.  Keep in mind, you’ll want to keep your sitemap updated as often as you make changes to your website, then ping the search engines to tell them to look for the update.

Tell the Search Engines When you Update your Sitemap

If your website, blog or content management system doesn’t already “ping” the search engines and update your sitemap automatically with your new updates and content, we offer this as a free service to our clients. We generate your website’s sitemap from the outside using our own website ‘crawler’ just like the search engines.  We then save this in an open format where the search engines can interpret and process it. We then tell the search engines with a simple ping, that they should take a look at your sitemap and note any changes.

Keep in mind, like everything else you can do all this yourself but we’ve perfected it and it’s just a basic part of our service.   If you want to do this yourself, the search engines have a special URL for you to go to.

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How to Ping Google

Google is definitely the dominant search engine, and you will want to tell the “big G” when you make any updates or changes to your website.  Google also has a sitemap tool in their Google Webmaster tools area.  If you haven’t already created your Google Webmaster account, you should.  There’s a lot of valuable data out there and you can track when they crawl your site and how many of your links are in their index..

The ping url is:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

You should receive a message stating that your sitemap has been successfully added to their list of sitemaps to crawl.

If you are qualifying an off-the-shelf content management system (CMS) system or creating your own custom CMS system then the capabilities listed below are imperative to achieving maximum organic search engine rankings.

A couple excellent open source CMS systems are Drupal and Joomla. It is easier to configure Drupal than Joomla to meet the search engine optimization (SEO) requirements discussed in this article.

ON PAGE SEO FEATURES NEEDED FOR CMS SYSTEM

1. Page Header Information (not visible on the page and between the tags). Note that the title, meta-description and meta-keywords tags listed below do not allow html tags at all.

a. Title tag - the most important SEO attribute on the page. Summary of Body content, no more than 70 characters, most important keywords in front. Ideally the title will also be of a persuasive nature. The title of the page is what users see and click on in search engine results pages so you have to make your persuasive and sales case in the title.

b. Meta-keywords tag - only the keywords that are in body content (spelled exactly the same), all of the keywords on the page, most important keywords in front. Place above the meta-description tag and after the title tag.

c. Meta-description tag - summary of body content, no more that 200 characters, most important keywords in front. Since many search engines including Google sometimes use the meta-description directly in their search engine results pages (SERP) as the description of the page this tag should contain keyword rich and persuasive sales-oriented content.

Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use, extensibility and responsiveness have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.

What's a content management system (CMS)?

A content management system is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site, much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them. Content can be simple text, photos, music, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. A major advantage of using a CMS is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. Since the CMS manages all your content, you don't have to.

Joomla!® CMS offers a vast array of user-friendly features and robust functionality. Because of these fascinating attributes, Joomla!® development services are preferred by both developers as well as businesses. Below are some of the exclusive benefits offered by Joomla!® CMS:

Open-source Technology – Joomla!® is an open source technology, which means that it is available for free. You need not pay thousands of dollars as a licensing fee and license renewal fees. The framework is released under GNU general public license, so anyone can see the source code of Joomla!® and customize it as per their needs. This is truly a great flexibility for Joomla!® developers.

SEO-friendly – This is an another great feature by Joomla!® CMS. Joomla!® based websites are more search engine friendly. There is one Apache module in Joomla!® known as rewrite module. This module enables developers to create SEO-friendly URLs. It also enables them to use the custom page title, meta tag description and meta keywords in every web page.

Secure – When the matter is about website security, Joomla!® out tracks all other CMS available on the market. The platform is backed by a team of security experts known as 'Joomla!® Security Strike Team'. The primary role of this team is to search and resolve the security problems. To perform this task, the team executes a few automated tests and rectifies all the codes. Thus, you can protect your website from the hackers. All you need to do is, install the latest version of Joomla!® CMS.

Language is no more a barrier – One more enthralling attribute of Joomla!® CMS is that it supports a number of languages. This has tempted non-English users to choose this feature-rich and flexible CMS development platform. Joomla!® has different language packs for different languages.

Template Integration – Joomla!® allows you to integrate any third-party template in a matter of minutes. All you need to do is open the template file and copy it to the Joomla!® template folder. This way you can change the design template of your website on a seasonal basis.

Joomla!® Community – Joomla!® community is a huge community of Joomla!® developers and its users. You may be aware that the official Joomla!® forum is one of the largest online communities across the globe.

Community Updates – The community developers work continuously on Joomla!® CMS to deliver hi-end security and advanced functionality. They strive to ensure that their audience uses latest and cutting-edge technology.

Joomla!® Extension System – This is truly an asset of Joomla!® CMS. The platform also allows developers to develop custom extensions. And there are a number of inbuilt extensions already available on its official website. Using these extensions, the website owners can enhance the performance of their website. Jooma!®'s extension system includes Plug-ins, Modules and Components.

This 90 minute webinar covers basic ACL terminology, creating new users groups, assigning permissions, adding new users & assigning users to groups, creating access levels, creating categories, articles and menu items specific for a user group, and testing ACL front end functionality.

With this video tutorial you can learn how to make, launch and develop a demo website with Joomla CMS. The presenter demonstrates how to launch a free demo trial site, how to use templates, how to create categories, articles, menu items and modules, and how to create a backup of the Joomla webiste.

I must count among the blessings of 2015 being lucky enough to discover the tremendous value of working with Neil Fabbo.

It's actually difficult to summarize the many strengths Neil brings to an engagement. He cares about the outcome. He brings all his experience, which is both deep and broad. He listens and is not afraid to ask questions or offer constructive alternatives. He has great humanity. Not only does he know Joomla but also he knows how to implement it with an eye to value and iterative growth of website capabilities. He took my skeletal sketch of requirements, worked with me to ensure that each feature was clearly defined, provided tremendous value in the selection of components, went extra miles where need be to get results that were not out of any box, and made the experience one I would not hesitate to repeat. Did I say too that he is honest? We might take this for granted but I can't underline enough how very impressed I was with his character and fairness in billing. A rarity in modern times.

if you are looking for a Joomla web development expert who can also provide strong strong practical web business counsel Neil must be among your top choices. 

http://meedpartners.com

SSL is a way of encrypting websites to make them safer and less hackable. Google is already penalizing sites that DON’T have this in place. Things are about to get a whole lot worse for pages with logins and credit card forms come January 2017.

All WordPress sites have a login page, and thus, every WordPress site will need an SSL cert to meet this criteria.

Secure sites are identified by two things: https:// in your browser bar and, at times, a symbol or color denoting the status. Take ours for example. We’ve got full SSL in place on our website:

 

 

Is there a catch? 

Even if you’re using SSL you could still be penalized.

Your site has to be FULLY encrypted. That means those that are using mixed content security, forcing https:// on some pages and not others, will also get you into trouble.

Here is an example of a mixed content site that uses SSL on some content and not others. You’ll notice a lowercase ‘i’ here in a circle to denote more info. Some browsers use an exclamation point. If you click that you’ll see a note like this indicating the non-secure connection:

 

 

Not so bad? Well here is what Google will start doing as first measures in 2017:

 

 

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Currently this change is restricted to Chrome, however, we’re going to see many browsers following suit. Google even gives raking boosts to sites that use HTTPS and has been doing so for some time now!

Even if you’re not using Chrome yourself you can’t afford to ignore this change. Windows remains a major player in the professional office space. The same can’t be said for its default browser Internet Explorer. In May of 2016 Chrome surpassed Internet Explorer to become the most used browser of desktop users with 41.3% of tracked traffic. This means that you’re turning off a huge portion of site visitors by not getting on board with the change.

You can get the details on the Google announcement here as well as a few more visuals on the proposed immediate changes. Long term we could be looking at something like the current the big red screen warning for those not in compliance:

 

 

So what do you do about it?

First, don’t panic. SSLs aren’t beginner territory, but they can be conquered with a little guidance and help. There are some free SSLs out there. In fact your host may even offer one and there are plenty of paid options. Not all SSLs are the same so you’ll have to be very deliberate in selecting one that is best for your content. The important thing is that you do indeed get one. The announcement does not state it will favor one type over the other.

 

We’re talking to our clients about this and felt it was important to let you know as well.

If you want to talk to someone about getting help to determine your options for SSL and getting your site 100% encrypted then do Contact Us.