Nick and James explain the basics of sitemaps and how to generate search friendly sitemaps online, both XML and HTML.

If you were ever wondering whether Google, Yahoo and MSN has access to information such as bounce rate and time on site, without analytics the answer is yes. Alexa provides an average time on site, bounce rate and pages viewed data for any site. I would asume then that Google and other search engines take this into consideration and it should play a part in your search engine optimisation campaign.

So how would Google use this information?

Consider that your site is of high quality and the design reflects your industry and is usable etc. This means that users will not bounce away from your site, spend time looking at the rest of your site and also read the content increasing time on site. This then suggests to Google and other search engines that your site provide a good user experience. Google’s policy is to ensure the users search query returns the best result, so by providing a good quality site it is forfilling its promise.

This will then be directly related to your SERP. The other situation is that your sites design, usability and content is poor meaning users don’t want to remain on your site and will not spend anytime on the site.

Consideration for your target audience is vital within an online marketing campaign and listings aren’t everything, If the site isn’t up to scratch then Google will see the users opinions through the variables stated and the strenght of you site will be effected.