Another useful instrument in Google Webmaster Tools is the Sitemap section in Site configuration>>Sitemaps:

 
      Figure 1 – Google Webmaster Tools “Sitemaps” Section

You can check your submitted XML Sitemaps in this section and identify which pages from them Google has managed to index. You can also tell if Google had trouble accessing the Sitemap by seeing if there is a checkmark in the “Status” field. That being said, why do we even want to do this? If a site is already “crawlable” in Google’s eyes, why do we need to perform this extra step?

A Sitemap is a true representation of a website’s structure in that it allows Google to access every page that you wish to have crawled, indexed and potentially be a target for search. It also helps augment Google’s crawling and indexing by allowing Google to crawl pages that they would not be able to access otherwise, such as JavaScript enabled links or links using Flash. Once all of the pages from your site that you want Google to know about are included in the Sitemap (50,000 maximum URLs in one Sitemap and 10MB uncompressed file size limit), upload it to the Sitemap section in Google Webmaster Tools by clicking on the “Submit a Sitemap” button:

 
        Figure 2 – “Submit a Sitemap” Button

Clicking on the above button reveals a field to enter the physical location of the XML Sitemap, which is usually in your website’s root directory, for instance: www.example.com/sitemap.xml.

Keep in mind that the specific numbers reported in the Sitemaps section of Webmaster Tools only apply to the URLs you submitted in your Sitemap(s), not the amount of pages you actually have in the index; there will always be a discrepancy between the “URLs submitted” and “URLs in web index”:

 
       Figure 3 – URLs in Web Index

In fact, it is rare that the number of URLs reported in both sections will be the same.  There could be discrepancies because of restrictions on a lot of files in your robots.txt or just duplicate pages that Google has decided not to index.
Just ensure that URLs in your Sitemap are the “canonical” URLs (www or non-www for example). If there are URLs you care about that aren’t in your Sitemap, just add them in and re-submit. Many times, web developers will add multiple pages to a site and forget to update their Sitemaps. This can be problematic if the new pages are not well interlinked on the site. Remember, your site can have the most optimized pages ever created, but all of your hard work will be in vain if Google doesn’t know about them!

 

There will always be times when webmasters need to change a website’s urls, temporarily point one page to another or take down a page (permanently or for routine maintenance). When encountered with these types of situations, many webmasters are unsure of how to handle the task at hand. As these issues are fairly common, we have compiled a bit of information about common HTTP status codes and their uses for you to refer to as needed.

200 OK
We’ll start with the basics. This HTTP status code indicates that the request was successful. You want this for all of your site’s pages (the ones that you want indexed).

301 Moved Permanently
If at any time a URL of a page changes (maybe from a site redesign or a new page has been created to replace an old one), it is recommended to use a 301 Moved Permanently redirect. This code tells search engines that the page should be permanently redirected to the new page. This also helps to make sure users are sent to the correct page.

302 Found
This code should only be used for temporary redirects. The word ‘temporary’ is key. There are very few instances where this type of redirect should be used, but unfortunately it is the easiest to implement, so when trying to implement permanent redirects, we often see that a 302 Found was implemented instead.  With this HTTP status code, Google will continue to crawl and index the original URL.

404 Not Found
A 404 Not Found status code means that the page does not exist. It could have existed in the past, but does not presently.  In most instances, websites will issue the generic 404 page when the requested page cannot be found. However, these pages do not have your site’s navigation and can’t help the user find the information they were originally looking for; this why it is always recommended to create a custom 404 page. 

503 Service Unavailable
Many of you have tired to go to a website and it is down; perhaps due to maintenance tasks taking place. The best thing to do in this situation is to return a 503 HTTP status code. This tells search engines that the site is only down temporarily. Similar to 404 pages, you should also create a custom message explaining when the site might be available again.

Have you ever wanted to make updates to your site from someone else’s computer? If you have, you probably have faced situations where the computer you use doesn’t have the programs you usually use to make these updates. One way to help you easily make updates is by using Cloud tools.

Moo Color Finder is a cloud tool that helps you find the colors being used in a site; this can come in very handy when creating new styles for your site and keeping it consistent. This tool is pretty simple to use, you can either go to the moo Color finder website and submit a url and it will return all of the color values in Hexadecimal and as a Photoshop Palette file, or you can add a snippet of code to the website you would like to retrieve the colors from and they will display on your page. For this you will need a page that uses a language such as PHP.

There is another great tool called Picnik that allows you to edit images on the cloud and could be very useful when tweaking images or adding new images to a blog post. This tool helps you crop, resize, zoom, rotate, sharpen among other features that provides the results in real time. After all the changes are made to the picture, all you need to do is save it.

Another tool that will be very useful when testing code in PHP, .Net and Javascript is called Coderun. This cloud tool allows you to create projects either from scratch, a template provided by the service or uploading your own files and testing it’s functionality. You can test changes you would like to make to your website without having to push it live or using a development server before pushing it to your live site.  

Google docs also provides great tools you can use in the cloud. These include creating a word document, a spreadsheet or even drawing. There is also a tool called Forms, which allows you to create HTML forms that can be used as a template when adding a form to your site.

The great thing about these tools is that you can access them from anywhere that has an internet connection and it can become a real time saver, since it allows you to use their services without the need of setting up any software in the computer you are currently using. They can help you improve your site by adding information, as well as styles and a means to test code which can help develop your site and give you flexibility allowing you to progress your social presence.