Some SEO questions

[applegreensnake]

If someone with the know-how has a minute or 2, here are some questions:


1. How would I create and upload an xml sitemap?

Do I need to have a sitemap on the actual website that people can click to, or is this just submitted to google?



2. If a domain name is not a keyword domain - for example if it's the name of a company - would it make sense to add a keyword to the url of the homepage - like this:

NameOfCompany dotcom/Keyword



3. I understand that having a homepage that has the text in images is not good for search engines to crawl, but how can this be best dealt with if the text in images - this design - is important to keep?

For example, if the text from the About page is repeated in a section on the homepage, would that improve things for seo?

Or will it be ok to have a homepage like this, perhaps with just a small amount of text, if there is text on other pages and the site is in general optimized?

Are there other ways a homepage like this could be improved, for seo? (Keeping the most of the text as images.)



4. Is there a list of directories somewhere that are good to get listed in for seo purposes?



5. For backlinks to be effective, do they need to be from sites that rank high for the keywords that are important for my site?

Or will sites in related industries but not the same industry also be useful for backlinks?

Or will sites with a high page rank that are in totally different industries also be good for seo?




6. When posting on blogs and forums, I guess it makes sense to create good anchor text, but some sites strip out links, leaving just the text... with these sites, if I add in my domain name, is this still seen by Google? Is it still useful?

for example, if I leave the following text as anchor text, and the link itself is stripped out:

Get Great Widgets at Domain dot com

...is that still going to have some positive impact with Google?

or would it be better if I put:

Get Great Widgets at http : // Domain dot com

(that text not actually being a link, because the blog owner has decided to not enable links)

?




7. What’s the best way to check what the incoming links are to specific websites?

Is backlinkwatch dotcom the right tool for this?



9. Is there a tool to see how a site ranks for particular keywords?



10. Is there a tool that can effectively analyze a site and indicate seo things that can be improved?


thanks

[tomewer]

2. Would you use that URL as your homepage? If so, I would not do that. If you are looking to target a longtail keyword and create content around that, you should definitely look to use the keyword in the URL.

3. I'd answer this question with a question - why do you have to have the bulk of your content in an image? If it is not the bulk of your content, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

4. Directories are so 1999. The only directories that are worth much are DMOZ and Yahoo - which are a nightmare (or costly) to get listed in. Focus on high quality backlinks, not directories.

5. Only the engineers at Google could give you a 100% answer to this question, but if you concentrate on getting high quality relevant links, you will do well. Relevant links from generally non-related sites (say a news articles on a website) are also very valuable. A completely out of context link from a high-PR site is probably still quite valuable, but discounted by the lack of relevance.

6. It sounds like you are spamming blogs and forums (apologies if this is not the case). You shouldn't be worrying about how your links are presented when it comes to blog commenting or forums. Although blog commenting can be a useful tool, it is far better as a means of starting relationships with bloggers in your niche (which can eventually lead to high quality backlinks).

7. Yahoo. I am not familiar with backlinkwatch.com.

8. Where is question 8?

9. Um...yes, type your keyword into Google! If you are looking for unbiased results, then check out this: Scroogle Scraper

10. Absolutely - your own eyes, after experience. Keep reading up on good SEO practice from reputable sources.

[n_touch]

You don't have to have a sitemap on your site for your visitors to go to. But it will help them if they get lost. I include a clickable sitemap on all sites since they are not hard to build, and have a link at the bottom of every page so that it will help if needed. You also have to think that it is also part of your internal linking. You don't have to have it, but with the time it takes to make one, I would suggest it.

[applegreensnake]

thanks for those replies