Recommended FREE Open Source Software

There are literally thousands of free open-source software applications online, but many of them are poor quality, buggy and are likely to cause problems on your computer, but the following list are high quality free applications which you can download and install without cost.

Safety

Free antivirus – AVG antivirus has been around for a long time and is very effective.  This version is free and is advisable for anyone who is failing to run any anti virus software. Un-install norton and install this now!

Free firewall – We love zone alarm products here and use he internet security suite on our PC’s here, but for a basic firewall, you can’t go wrong with this. If you upgrade to full version, you get even more protection.

Spyware remover – Adaware is one of the best and most used free spyware removal packages available.

Spyware and malware remover – Spybot search and destroy is another excellent and free spyware and malware removal package. Spyware complements Adaware and should be used along with AVG Antivirus, Zone alarm, and Adaware to ensure your PC remains free from viruses, trojans and spyware.

Free remote backup – Free remote backup is finally here! With Mozy you get 2GB of free backup space, so you can download it and have it automatically backup you data at a free, secure and remote location.

Recover deleted files – Free software to recover files that you have deleted on your computer, digital camera or removal drive! This software is really simple to use and extremely useful!

Image editing

User-friendly image editing – Free image editing software that has been made to replace the basic paint from Windows. With Paint.net you can create and alter photos using layers, add effects, and a number of other tools. It’s very useful and easy to use.

Photoshop alternative – The GIMP is an alternative to Adobe’s photoshop. The GIMP has a lot features that Photoshop has including clone, airbrush, layers and lots of effects. It has come over from the Linux O/S and is typically techy, but very good indeed.

Illustrator alternative - Inkscape is an alternative to Adobe Illustrator. It’s a is a Vector Graphics Editor which basically means it’s useful for for graphic design, page layout, typography, logos and sharp-edged artistic illustrations.

Make your own panoramas – This free program makes creating your own panoramas using your digital camera extremely simple! I’ve tried loads of different “stitching” software, but this one is easily the best! Believe it or not, auto-stitch is completely free!

Andrea Mosaic – AndreaMosaic is a photographic mosaic software with which you can create your own photographic mosaics and with your own pictures. I’ve used it to create a number of photo mosaics and would really recommend it!

Media

Picasa 3 – Well, another google product release, which is easy to use, free and allows gallery creations which can be shared with the public or kept private for personal use.

Audacity – Edit and create digital audio files quickly and easily with this free audio editor

Super – If you need a simple, yet very efficient tool to convert (encode) or play any Multimedia file, without reading manuals or spending long hours training, then SUPER © is all you need. It is a Multimedia Encoder and a Multimedia Player, easy-to-use with 1 simple click.

Quicktime Alternative - as it says on the tin!

Real Alternative - as it says on the tin!

Windows Media Player 11 – I am not a fan of iTunes at all and this is the alternative which doesn’t encode your audio and allows you the freedom to adjust what format your music is in, protected or unprotected.

Internet tools

Mozilla Firefox – The Ultimate Browser! Step aside Internet Explorer, your days are numbered. This really is a superb browser, excellent on PC, MAC & Linux and delivers a perfect tool for browsing the net.

Mozilla Thunderbird – Free email client to replace microsoft outlook express or mail. Works on PC, MAC & Linux and is good, but not really for business clients.

Skype – Make free phonecalls and video calls using skype and even reduce your outbound costs by using their skype to landline service. Awesome software (essential over broadband) and ideal for speaking to friends, family and business contacts worldwide)

Voice Recording software for Skype – as it says on the tin!

Net transport 1.9 – This version of the software is free to use and you can use it to download media off the internet, for example to download streamed files like real audio files and wmv files completely.

Allway Sync – This free program synchronizes folders and files between computers and other storage devices. This program has a feature to automatically synchronize any folders selected at regular intervals to ensure your files are kept secure. Its simple to use and free for personal use so I would recommend it.

Filezilla - One of the cool bolt on’s for Firefox, this software is an ideal ‘bolt on’ embedded FTP client for use inside the Firefox browser.

Other

Open Office – Very nice, free open-office software including all the tools you expect from microsoft office but without the cost you’d expect from buying microsoft office! Very cool, perfect on various O/S.

Dark room – A full screen text editor which helps you write on your PC completely free of distractions! This is the PC equivalent of Write Room a mac application.

Google Earth – Certainly a wow factor, if you’ve not used this before. A great app by google, with some controversy over it’s latest streep view…

PDF reader – In my opinion this software is better than Adobe because it is much less resource intensive so very quick to loads up

PDF creator – as it says on the tin!

Primo PDF – PDF creation and conversion tool

Tugzip - compression tool for packing files into archives

Xint – Notepad alternative

As developers, we are interested in all browser releases, OS releases and software on the market but there is a benefit for end users also. We run several versions of linux here, MAC OS and windows XP here at www.awebserver.co.uk, with every browser possible, but we have also downloaded and run the latest windows 7 to evaluate it’s facilities and so far, so good.

As most of you will know, windows has evolved over the years with most stability coming from windows 2000 and XP Pro with some bloopers surrounding ME and of course Vista which has been quickly dusted under the carpet with mention of it’s predecessor windows 7.0 ahead of time.

On the face of it, it looks really good. A polished interface with some MAC type touches are a welcome addition to this latest version of windows, but rather than ranting on about how we like it, why not try for yourself! You can download the latest evaluation version for free and run it on a spare computer to test it out.

Simply download the software from the link below, burn it onto a DVD, insert into your computer and reboot.

Download Windows 7 Release Candidate

Not only can you download windows 7.0 but you can also download many other microsoft releases for testing purposes. It is free and although robust (in the case of windows 7) it is not to be used commercially, as the system will expire in 2010 on a fixed date.

The market place is a mix of die hard MAC lovers  raving about it’s robust OS and high performance computing, inhibited only by it’s high cost and then we have Linux users, growing in numbers and generating more interest month by month with reliable, virus resilient and robust OS which is free, but beyond the skillset of most everyday computer users and then of course, the mainstream – windows. Whether we love it or hate it (and we generally love it) windows is mainstream computing at it’s best and windows 7 looks like it might finally be a decent reliable OS to work with from day 1. ….. or will it?

Windows 7 RC1: Windows XP Mode

Perhaps the biggest surprise – and for Microsoft, possibly the biggest boost – is a feature that has been announced but not yet available: Windows XP Mode, which will run XP applications in an XP compatibility box, but make them appear as if they are running directly in Windows 7 itself. In this way, it is hoped that users will get the best of both worlds – the compatibility of XP and the shinier new Windows 7 interface.

The feature sounds underwhelming until you dig into the details. According to Microsoft, you won’t actually have to manually run Virtual PC to run those XP applications once you’ve installed them; instead, they will appear to work directly within Windows 7.

You’ll just have to run Virtual PC the first time and run the application – from that point on, it will appear to be just other application running directly in Windows 7 (at least, that’s the promise). And you won’t have to buy XP separately – your Windows 7 EULA (end-user licence agreement) includes XP as well. In essence, you get two operating systems for the price of one.

This solves one of Microsoft’s biggest problems with XP very cleverly – it’s such a solid, stable operating system that people simply don’t want to give it up to move to a newer operating system. Now they don’t have to – they can run XP as if it were a part of Windows 7.

Microsoft says WinXP Mode will soon be ready for download, and as soon as it is, I’ll follow up with a report on how well it works.

Windows 7 RC1: Speeding things up

We ran this on a 5 year old acer laptop aspire 3002LMi (AMD Sempron 2.8 with 512MB RAM) which had problems with drivers when running Linux Ubuntu, so we thought it was an ideal unit for testing windows 7.0.  Even at that configuration, the operating system was surprisingly fast, seemingly even faster than the beta, which represented a significant performance improvement over Windows Vista.

Despite the initial installation running smoothly, I noticed interference lines running across the screen during which i assumed was to do with a default driver for the graphics card. On investigation, the audio, graphics and network drivers were missing, but luckily the wireless driver worked straight out of the box. After an initial connection to the internet, the missing drivers were automatically picked up, downloaded, installed and the system rebooted.  After that, the laptop worked like a charm.

Windows 7 RC1: Overall interface improvements

Windows 7 RC1 includes a host of subtle user-interface changes that, taken together, represent an improvement over the beta.

For example, Windows 7 RC1′s task bar is the most visible improvement over Windows Vista. In the beta, the task bar was already impressive; in RC1, it has been tweaked to become even more useful.

If you frequently open many files in a single application, you’ll welcome the new feature Microsoft calls “task bar thumbnail overflow”.

As with the Windows 7 beta, when you have many files open in an application and hover your mouse over its icon on the task bar, you’ll see a list of files open, rather than their individual thumbnails, because that many thumbnails simply can’t fit on your screen.

In Windows 7 RC1, this list view has been juiced up, and it works more like the thumbnail view. Highlight any file on the list, and you’ll “peek” at the highlighted window, just as you can do in thumbnail view. In addition, you can close any window by clicking a small “X” in the same way as you can in thumbnail view.

Keyboard junkies will appreciate a new keyboard shortcut for the task bar that makes it easier to jump to an individual window in an application without having to use the mouse.

As with the beta version of Windows 7, you can still use the keyboard to launch any application that has been pinned to the task bar. For example, if Microsoft Word is the second item pinned to the task bar, press Windows Key-2, and you’ll launch Word.

With Windows 7 RC1, though, you can now cycle through individual windows within any application on the task bar. For example, if Word is the second icon on the task bar, and it has several windows open, hold down the Windows key, then press 2 repeatedly; each time you press the 2 key, you’ll cycle through a new open window in Word.

The task bar has gotten several other new features as well. It can display more pinned icons than previously, so that if you have many of them pinned, you no longer have to scroll through them.

For example, at a resolution of 1024 by 768, you’ll be able to see 15 rather than the previous 12 icons if you use large icons, and 22 rather than 16 if you use small icons.

Windows 7 RC1: Making the jump

The beta of Windows 7 introduced Jump Lists, which are lists of actions or items associated with a particular application. In the beta, to see a Jump List for any application, you right-clicked its icon in the task bar or Start menu.

Typically, you’d see a list of the most recent open files (or websites, in the case of Internet Explorer), as well as options to pin or unpin the application icon to and from the task bar.

Windows 7 RC1 tweaks the Jump Lists by giving you some control over the maximum number of items on the list – you can now limit it to under 10. In addition, if you right-click the Control Panel when it’s in the task bar, you’ll see a list of the most recently used Control Panel features and applets.

That’s mildly useful. It would be better if you could see a similar Jump List when you right-click Control Panel on the Start Menu. Unfortunately, though, you don’t.

In Windows 7 RC1, you can also manually pin files to a Jump List for a program that doesn’t normally handle that file type – something that you couldn’t do in the beta. You can then open the file using the program to which it has been pinned.

But be careful when you use this feature, because it can lead to unintended consequences: when you drag the file to an application’s Jump List, that application will now open all files of that type when you double-click the file.

For example, drag an HTML file to Notepad, and Notepad will always open HTML files from then on, rather than, say, Internet Explorer. (Of course, Internet Explorer will continue to open HTML pages on the internet or a network.)

Those who use Remote Desktop Connection to take control of other computers on their networks will have something to be pleased about – when you pin the Remote Desktop Connection to your task bar, it now includes in the Jump List all of the remote desktop connections you’ve saved. So you can now more easily take control of a remote PC.

Microsoft also claims that now you can change task-bar settings in a more reliable way. In earlier versions, including Windows 7 beta, when you made changes to the task bar, those changes were permanently saved only after Explorer exited at the end of a session.

If there was a crash or if Windows did not shut down properly, the task-bar settings wouldn’t be in effect for the next session. Microsoft says that the taskbar changes are now made permanently within 30 seconds of when they are applied, which should eliminate the problem.

Alt-Tab windows switching has been improved; the feature has now been combined with Aero Peek. When you use Alt-Tab to cycle through your open windows, if you pause on any, you’ll be able to peek through to the desktop and see the open window as well as the underlying desktop, along with outlines of any other open windows.

I found this new piece of eye candy very useful because I no longer had to guess at the contents of any open window – I could see it immediately.

Windows 7: Networking Improvements

Windows 7 adds a few networking improvements that Vista and XP lacked. One of the most significant of these is HomeGroups, which give structure to the process of sharing devices and media files over a home network.

Setting up a HomeGroup between two or more Windows 7 PCs automates the sharing of Libraries (collections of pictures, music files, movies, or documents), printers, and storage devices. Windows 7 also increases the number of SMB network connections that you can have in a single network.

Setting up a HomeGroup needn’t put all of your systems at risk, it seems. When you create one, Windows generates a secure passkey that you must enter on every system that you add to the HomeGroup, which should help keep interlopers from reaching your shared files and devices, even if they manage to get onto your wireless network.

Windows 7: Performance

The biggest question on everyone’s mind is whether Windows 7 introduces much-needed performance improvements over Vista. We can’t answer that yet, but we can say that it seems a little faster.

Throughout the OS, windows open faster, apps seem to launch more quickly, and the interface seems a little snappier than it was with my Vista installation on the same machine.

Startup is a bit quicker, too, getting us from power-on to fully booted in about 74 seconds, versus 87 seconds prior to the upgrade. This comparison is totally unscientific, mind you, and we’ll do more extensive testing in the Test Centre soon. But our first impression was that Windows 7 generally outperformed Vista on the hardware we used.

How does it benefit you (merchants)?

Google’s worldwide user base performs more than hundred of millions searches a day. These might be the people actively searching for the items you sell. That presents an enormous opportunity to introduce your products to customers you might otherwise spend lots of money in advertising trying to reach. The bottom line, if you’re operating an online storefront, listing your products in Froogle is one of the best (free) way to market to thousands of targeted customers.

How to submit your products to Froogle?

To get your products listed on Froogle, you need to create and submit a data feed. We understand setting up a data feed manually is cumbersome and ineffective. This is exactly why we provide a Froogle Feeder in our e-commerce stores as standard.

Once you have the online product catalogue ready, you can start creating the data feed, here is what you will need to do:

	Creating an Froogle Account Click here to sign up for a Froogle account. First Name (Given Name) Last Name (Surname) Phone number Email address Company Store name Store URL Please make sure that you ship to the following country: UK
	Create a data feed of your product catalogue The built-in froogle module will help you to create the data feed from your existing product database, easily and quickly. To create a data feed using our software is a simple process. Log into your e-commerce admin area Click on Products > Froogle Export Select TAB from the drop down menu Add current tax rate into box e.g 15% Select Plain Text File from the drop down Press ‘Create Feed’ Your feed will be created instantly and you can download it to your desktop.
	Upload your feed via FTP With your Froogle acceptance email, you will also receive the login and password to your FTP account. Please sign in to the account to upload your datafeed file. Alternatively, log into your google account, click on Base and use the BULK uploader. Simply browse for your feed file and upload it.
	Froogle does not accept the following types of sites: Affiliate Sites, Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) Sites, Comparison Shopping Sites and Mirror Sites. Froogle does not accept the following types of products: Auction items (unless they have a ‘Buy It Now’ price that remains fixed throughout an auction) and Illegal products. Read the full details of froogle policies.

1. Good Web Content – Target Your Audience With Good Content

Content is key in Web site optimization. Content is the number one reason why visitors are looking for your site. If you make it difficult for the visitor to find you or your content, they will find someone else who will. Your content should fulfill a need for the visitor; whether this need is for information, merchandise or a service, and it should communicate it clearly.

Targeting your audience with the content they are looking for is paramount in order for searchers and search engine spiders to find you; in addition, your keyword-rich content will determine how highly you are ranked in the search engines (along with other factors).

A good rule of thumb to follow when determining how much content to include is to insert between 200-250 words of rich search engine friendly content on each of your site pages. More words are fine; just be mindful of the fact that users typically don’t appreciate having to scroll down or read all the way across the screen. Break your content up in into columns, bulleted items, headlines, etc. (more on this in step 4).

2. Images and ALT Tags

On a 56K modem (yep, they’re still around), it would take forever to load this page. Plus, it kind of hurts my eyes. If you’ve got load-intensive graphics or other technology that takes a long time to load, you’ll have lost a good part of your audience.

No one wants to wait around forever while a site is loading. Even if you’ve got a site with great content, if the graphics are dragging it down, you’ll have lost your audience. They’ll just be using the “Back” button to quickly find another site that won’t take forever to load.

A good rule of thumb is to only use graphics that are relevant to your site’s purpose, and aim for a file size that is 12 KB or smaller. If you must include an image that is larger than 12 KB, then use a thumbnail image.

In the context of search engine optimization, load-intensive graphics will hinder search engine spiders, since spiders’ primary food is content. Use images sparingly, and instead, work on adding relevant content that will attract both users and search engine spiders.

Provide text-only alternatives for your content that can’t be read by search engines (such as JavaScript, image maps, Flash and other multimedia). Include text for your image Alt tags that includes your keyword phrases, for instance, if you’re selling widgets, use the ALT tag “widgets”.

3. Site Navigation

Make sure that every single page on your site has clear navigation, and users know exactly where they are and where they are going. Navigation buttons should not contain mystery meat terms like “stuff”, or “about me”, or “cool things”. All of your navigation should be painfully clear as to what page it is describing.

In addition, make sure that all of your links actually work. It’s frustrating for users to click on something and encounter the dreaded 404 Error Page Not Found.

Also, search engine spiders search your site for indexable content by traveling your links. If your site links are broken, guess what? You just missed a visit by a search engine spider, and they might not come back again. Search engine spiders can’t navigate a poorly designed site, and search engine users don’t have the patience to navigate a poorly designed site.

4. Make Your Text Easy To Read

A dark background, a table with jarring colors and light text – if let loose on the Web, would drive away visitors in droves. This might sound like a no-brainer, but sites with text that is hard to decipher tend to get less visits by search engine users. Make your text readable.

• Don’t use silly fonts that might look really cool in your HTML editor, but are unreadable on the Web.
• Avoid busy backgrounds that obscure the text; if site visitors have to slow down to interpret your text, you’ve just lost an audience.
• Make your text scannable: use bullets, headlines, and bold text so users can scan your content quickly.

5. Keywords and Phrases

Keyword phrases are the bedrock of search engine optimization. Keyword phrases used appropriatately in your site’s content will attract both search engine spiders and search engine users.

The main thing with keyword phrases is that you need to come up with the keywords that are searched for most frequently and that are the most relevant to your site’s purpose.

• Keep the goal of your site firmly at the forefront. If your site is about the Holiday Lets for example, then it makes sense to target keyword phrases that are relevant to this topic. It does NOT make sense to splash in a few keyword phrases that are searched for frequently, but have nothing to do with your site’s purpose.
• You also need to target your audience. If you were searching for sites about Holiday Lets, what would you look for? Make sure that your site is targeted at who you would like to come visit your site. Quality users beat quantity users any day, because the users who find your site because of the site’s purpose, and not because they accidentally stumbled upon it, will be the ones who will be your best users/customers/repeat visitors.
• Keyword Stuffing.It’s one thing to insert keyword phrases appropriately where they make sense throughout your site; and it’s quite another to stuff as many keywords (be they relevant to your site or not) in your content. This is what’s called “keyword stuffing” and search engines consider this spamming.

6. Title Tags

The Title tag is extremely important to both search engine users and search engine spiders.

Search engines put a lot of weight on the text found in the Title tag, and if it’s not optimized properly, than you’ve lost a vital source for high rankings.

The title tag can be found in the HEAD section of your web pages, and should be different for every page in your site, i.e., don’t just put the same title tag on every single page of your site.

Make your Title tags unique for each page, and make them relevant to what information is on that specific page. Most search results will show sites that have the searched-for words in the title tag itself, so if you want to be found for the keyword phrase “Widget Uses”, then put that phrase in your title tag.

A vague title tag is pretty much useless, and can do more harm than good. Search engine users typing in a search query will scan the search results looking at the titles of the websites listed, so if your title isn’t optimized, yours won’t be given a second look.

In addition, when searchers bookmark a favorite site, the title is what shows up in the bookmarks. A vaguely titled site won’t get repeat visitors if the searcher can’t figure out from the title why they bookmarked it in the first place.

7. Meta Keyword and Description Tags

The Meta keyword and description tags are both found in the Head section of your web page code and the tools to author this information is provided as standard within our CMS systems and e-commerce systems.

Meta keyword and description tags are not a magic bullet that will rocket your site to high rankings, but they are an important factor in optimizing your web site for search engines and search engine users. The information in these tags can influence how search engines view your site, and optimally the description that you write will show up in search engine listings.

Meta Description Tag

For the Meta description tag, write a short blurb with targeted keyword phrases that will entice users to click through when your site comes up in the search engine results. For example:

• “design stuff: Things that will help you learn about sites and stuff, wow!” is not a good meta description. It’s vague, says nothing about why I would want to visit this site, and is frankly kind of silly.
• This is better: “Ten steps to search engine friendly site design – free search engine optimization tutorial.” There’s good, descriptive keyword phrases here, and it’s obvious what the site is about.

Meta Keyword Tags

Meta keyword tags should be handled with caution. Don’t stuff your meta keyword tags with a hundred different spellings or tenses of the same three words, and don’t pack your keyword tags with irrelevant keywords that have nothing to do with your site’s purpose (this is called spamming and search engines don’t look too kindly on it).Be very stingy with how many times you repeat a word, and don’t repeat a keyword more than twice. Overall, don’t spend a ton of time on either of these two tags – yes, they ARE helpful, but in the grand search engine scheme of things, they don’t add enough value to really go nuts over.

8. Doorway Pages and Splash Pages

Doorways are simple HTML pages that are customized to a few particular keywords or phrases, and they are programmed to be visible only by specific search engines and their spiders.

These pages are designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to trick the search engines into giving them higher rankings. Doorway pages should be avoided, since search engines are pretty savvy when it comes to figuring out if these are being used or not.

Splash pages are intended to be entryways into your site. They usually consist of really neat Flash or other multimedia animation, and may (or may not) invite the user in to the rest of the site when the animation or other such cool stuff is over with.

These pages look really neat, but for the most part, they have no significant text for spiders to crawl (and remember, content is king in search engine optimization).

Not every Joe Browser is able to view the content the way it was designed to view. It’s best to stay away from splash pages and focus instead on optimizing your site’s content and site design.

9. Proofread Your Site

This might come as a shock, but there are a lot of sites out there that go live with glaring spelling errors, annoying capitalization mistakes, and embarrassing grammatical blunders.

Avoid Spelling Mistakes

• Run your content through a word processing program and use spell check before ever putting it up live on the Web. Bad spelling makes your site look unprofessional and unpolished.
• Scan your copy for errors, leave it, and scan it again. You’ll catch more mistakes if you take a break every so often. In addition, have someone else read your copy for you. They might be able to catch errors and make suggestions you wouldn’t come up with.
• Check your grammar by using a word processing program as well. Microsoft Word allows you to do this by clicking on Tools, then Spelling and Grammar.

A poorly edited site can have the best content in the world, but if it’s not proofread for errors, it will make you look both unprofessional and a bit thick.

10. Site Design Guidelines

Here are some additional guidelines to keep in mind when optimizing your site for both search engine spiders and search engine users.

Good Web Site Design Guidelines

• Browser Compatibility. Test what your site looks like in a multitude of different browsers. Try Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Avant, etc.
• Overall Appeal.How does your site appeal to visitors? What could be improved?
• Loads Quickly. Images should be sized so they don’t bump up load time, and your site should be as clean as possible: meaning, that if you choose to use multimedia technology, use it sparingly.
• Proofread for errors.A simple spelling error can drive away users. Proofread your site and fix any mistakes.
• Logos or Brand Names. If your site has a logo or brand name, be sure to include this on every page so the user knows exactly where they are at all times.
• Flash. Be careful when using Flash, since it deters search engine spiders and increases loading time. Instead, focus on keyword-rich content rather than bandwidth-hogging multimedia.
• Frames. Most major search engine spiders are unable to read frames. If you must use frames, include important body text within a <no frames> tag.
• Sound. Most users find automatically generated sound on a web site extremely distracting and irritating.
• Pop-ups. Pop-ups are annoying at best. Avoid using them for any reason.

If search engines can’t find your site’s pages, then there’s no way for those pages to be indexed, which means you miss out on all that awesome, money-earning traffic. That’s no good.

So how can you explicitly tell a search engine where you pages are? The answer is to use a sitemap.

What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is essentially a table of contents for your website. But unlike the list of pages you might offer visitors looking for a quick way to navigate your site, the sitemaps we’re talking about here are not designed for human viewing. Instead, a sitemap file serves the same information in a format that search engine spiders — the automated machines that “crawl” the web and catalog its contents — can easily understand. Sitemaps will go a long way to improving the searchability of any website. No self-respecting site owner should be without one.

A sitemap is a simple XML file named, fittingly, sitemap.xml. It gives the location, last-modified date and some other metadata for every page in your site.

When a search engine bot comes to your site and finds a sitemap, it will follow all the specified URLs, indexing the content and including whatever metadata and other goodies your sitemap instructs it to pay attention to.

The Sitemap Protocol

The sitemap protocol is pretty simple. The basic format looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
        <url>
            <loc>http://www.awebserver.co.uk/</loc>
            <lastmod>2008-10-13T04:20:36Z</lastmod>
            <changefreq>always</changefreq>
            <priority>1.0</priority>
        </url>
        <url>
            <loc>http://www.awebserver.co.uk/new-post/</loc>
            <lastmod>2008-10-13T20:20:36Z</lastmod>
            <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
            <priority>0.8</priority>
        </url>
    </urlset>

As you can see, we start with a basic XML declaration. Make sure you specify the UTF-8 encoding, as Google requires that a sitemaps be UTF-8 encoded or it will be ignored. The next line opens our urlset tag which is the container tag that will hold all our URLs.

Note that we’re pointing to the schema defined on sitemaps.org. As of this writing, version 0.9 is latest official schema.

The next tag is the url tag which is just a container for all the bits of information we can tell the search engines about for each page on our site. Those options are:

• loc (required) — the URL of the page. This URL must begin with the protocol (generally http) and end with a trailing slash, if your web server requires it.

• lastmod (optional) — the date of last time you modified the page. Should be in W3C Datetime format, but you can omit the time portion.

• changefreq (optional) — how often the page is likely to change. Ostensibly this helps search engines figure out how often to crawl the page. But just because you put “hourly,” don’t expect the Google bot to stop by that often. The possible values are: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and never. Note that you’ll probably only want to use “never” for permalink archive pages.

• priority (optional) — the priority of this URL relative to other URLs on your site. In other words, how important is this particular URL in the grand scheme of your site? Possible values range from 0.0 – 1.0. If you don’t specify a priority, the URL will receive a default value of 0.5.

Only the loc node is actually required. As we’ll see below, most out-of-the-box sitemap creators (true, only the hardcore build these by hand) make it easy to give out more info than just the URL.

Pointing to Multiple Sitemaps

By default, search engine bots will expect your sitemap to live at http://mysite.com/sitemap.xml — the root level of the site.

Of course that doesn’t mean you can’t have a simple pointer file at the root level and then the actual sitemaps file somewhere else. In fact, your sitemap.xml file cannot exceed 10 megabytes in size and should have no more than 50,000 URLs per file. If you’ve got a very large site, you’ll need to use a pointer and several separate sitemap.xml files.

To do that create a root sitemap.xml file with content like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
   <sitemap>
      <loc>http://mysite/sitemap1.xml</loc>
      <lastmod>2008-10-13T18:23:17+00:00</lastmod>
   </sitemap>
   <sitemap>
      <loc>http://mysite.com/sitemap2.xml</loc>
      <lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
   </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

Then at the URLs sitemap1.xml and sitemap2.xml you’d define the different parts of your sitemap using the same scheme we saw above.

Creating a Sitemap

OK, now that you know what a sitemap file is, how do you go about creating one?

The thing about sitemaps is that they need to be dynamic, that is, whenever you add a new post or URL to your site, you need to update the sitemap. For small sites, hand coding might be an option, but even the simplest of sites gets pretty complex pretty quickly.

Fortunately, there are some tools that can make the task easier. For instance, you can use the Google Sitemap Generator, which is a Python script that creates a sitemap for you. As a bonus, compatibility with Google’s requirements is pretty guaranteed. The sitemap generator even comes with instructions on how to set up a cron job so that your sitemap stays up to date.

But even using cron isn’t ideal in most cases — especially if you have a site that adds dozens of new pages everyday. Luckily, most of the major publishing systems and web frameworks offer ways to create dynamically updated sitemaps. Here are a few links to get your started:

• Movable Type: Movable Type allows you create as many templates as you’d like, so just create a new sitemaps template and make sure it gets served at the URL: http://mysite.com. To help you get started, check out Niall Kennedy’s somewhat dated, but still helpful, tutorial on Sitemaps in Movable Type.

• WordPress: To generate sitemaps in WordPress, just install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin. It will handle all the dirty work, automatically updating your sitemap every time you edit or create a post.

• Django: The Django web development framework ships with a built-in sitemap generator. For more details read through the official documentation.

• Drupal: Like Django, Drupal ships with a sitemap tool. Head over to the official documentation for more details.

• Expression Web Extras: This macro integrates with Microsoft Expression Web to create local or server-based sitemaps. For details visit Expression Extras Toolbar.

Know any other sitemap creation tools we should be pointing to? Log in and add them to the list!

Conclusion

Sitemaps aren’t particularly difficult to use, and they can work wonders for search engine visibility and ranking. They’re no substitute for quality content and inbound links, but if Google and rest of the search players currently see your site as a black hole on the web, offering up a sitemap is the best way to make friends with search engine spiders.

In the first place, the content of your website must read well for the user. It must be interesting, informative and useful to gain maximum conversions, but written in mind of the search engines is key, to include carefully placed keywords, alt text and embedded links.

• Site optimisation
• Site popularity
• Link popularity

Site optimisation is about placing your keywords in the right places on your website and making your website accessible to search engines.

Look for websites and ask them to link to you

There are three ways you can find websites that might want to link to you.

• Go to your favourite search engine and type in some words related to what your organisation does
• Sift through the websites in directories such as Yahoo! or the Open Directory
• Find out who’s currently linking to both you and your competitors, check who’s linking to them, and who’s linking to them, and so on (To see a list of the inbound links to a website go to Google and type in link:http://www.URL.com)

Now that you’ve found these websites, ask them to link to you. A quick phone call or e-mail ought to do the trick. And remember, always mention that linking to your website will benefit their site users and therefore their website. You could also offer a link exchange, where by you both link to each other. If you’re going to do this, it’s wise to link to their website first, before getting in contact.

Here are some dont’s with regards to getting followers:

Don’t try to amass a huge following before you’ve done some tweeting. People will not be interested in following you when they click on your Twitter page to see what you’ve got, and notice you don’t have much. You need to have tweeted more than, “Trying to figure this Twitter out” and “I think I’ve got it figured out now.” Tweet, tweet, tweet before you gather your flock. Don’t know what to say? Try “retweeting” (RT) some other peoples’ tweets that resonate with you. Reply to what someone else says and start up a conversation. Tell what you’re doing on your business right now. Those are several tweets in the making right there

Don’t shoot out promotion after promotion. When others look at your timeline, they’ll notice you’re just in it for you. People want to know what’s in it for them. There are millions of Twitters to follow, why should they follow you when you’re only tweeting about your own annoying promotions?

Engage in conversation with your Twitter friends. If they’re your friends/followers, shouldn’t you reply to them on a daily basis? I don’t mean reply to all of them everyday, just do several replies to various tweets a day. Again, your potential followers will look at your Twitter timeline and if you don’t ever talk to anyone, it’s a big turn off.  It says ME, ME, ME. So hit @reply and give attaboys, words of encouragement, comments on their blog post link or tell them how you like their latest product.  Offer answers when someone has a question, which is an excellent way to brand yourself as an expert.  And if someone @replies to one of your posts, it’s considered common courtesy to comment back.

The biggest advantage of Twitter is using it to build relationships. Offer value, yes, but also take the time to “talk” to people so they can see you as a real life person. Give first, make friends, and watch your business world open up – just from tweeting on Twitter.

Content is KING

Don’t assume that web visitors know and fully understand your products or services and ensure you don’t complicate matters by typing trade lingo. You must talk layman to your customers and put yourself in the mind of the shopper. Ask yourself how they would search for the products or services that you sell and make a note of all the relevant keywords that you come up with.

Tip 1: Choose a title for your product which is clear, concise and includes a search keyword. e.g If you sell an elecric saw, don’t just put Bosch Model 123 but write Bosch Model 123 Electric Saw. It might be obvious to you that it’s a saw, but the fact the title has ‘Electric Saw’ in it will help search engines to locate it when someone searches for electic saw, or saw.

Tip 2: Write a detailed description of your product or service. Commonlywebsite owners just copy a spec from a manufactures catalogue or put one or two basic lines of information. Consider writing a review of the product, how it performs, what tasks it suits,

Tip 3: Use a site map to create a google friendly view of your website to ensure each and every page is indexed properly.

Tip 4: Consider posting your products into the froogle system (exporter from our e-commerce system is standard). You can do this manually or via a flat file export. Obviously this is more relevant to sites with products for sale on their e-commerce site.

Tip 5: Link backs. Try and get your website link on as many sites as possible, using link exchanges, advert runs, banner exchanges, forums, blogs, twitter etc. The more sites which connect to yours, the better.

Modern Day Blogging

Social networking is big business with facebook, twitter, youtube, myspace etc etc all allowing information to be published for all to see. Utilise this technology as best you can (within the guidelines set) to promote yourself further online. Consider running your own blog to promote your products and services to your customer base, an excellent way to get more traffic. We can provide you with a blogging software at reasonable rates, so contact us to discuss this on 0845 643 0978

Here are 5 simple tips for optimising your website in order to improve conversions:

The 3 click rule: If a user enters your website as a result of a search engine link or referral, they must be able to find what they want within 3 clicks (or 5 seconds) otherwise you risk losing them. Clear naming of categories, informative and clear page content, inviting page colours and layout are all essential to capture a prospective customer.

Promotion from the start: Show the customer what they will save if they buy from you, offer a first time purchase incentive, promote the advantages of buying from you rather than the competition and showcase how professional you are from the very start.

Simple Navigation: Use simple terms to describe your sections and avoid too many sub-categories. A well-planned site map and lots of obvious internal page links will help even the least savvy internet users. The second that a customer has to work hard to navigate a site is the second they will click on to a competitor’s website.

Quality Images: Poor quality, pixelated images at the wrong size will make your site look poor and will fail to intise a customer to buy. Good quality, clear images properly displayed will assist in converting the casual browser into a confirmed order.

Complete the sale: Ensure your navigation is simple and make the customer aware that they are in a secure checkout. At every stage, make it clear what information they must provide and ensure they are aware it’s a secure website process. Display SSL notices or advise them that the payment page is protected by a third party gateway. Clearly display your privacy policy and enable easy opt in / opt out of any mailers you run.