The Weekly Wrap – 9th July 2014

Ignite Search Weekly Wrap – 9th July 2014

100% Curated SEO/Online Marketing Goodness.

In the land of SEO:

Google Webmaster Tools Beta International Targeting Reports

The new International Targeting report is designed to help webmasters who have international sites and use hreflang markup understand common mistakes and learn what errors they need to fix, in order to better communicate the language settings across the webmaster’s internationalized web site.

Google: Redirecting A Penalized Site To Penalty Free Site Likely Won’t Negatively Impact The Site

What if a competitor takes a site that has a severe penalty and 301 redirects it to my penalty-free site – would it cause my penalty-free site to get a penalty? John Mueller has the answer.

In other news:

Google’s New AdWords Editor Version Offers Shopping Campaigns Support, More Display Targeting Options

Roughly a month ahead of the rollover to Shopping Campaigns, Google has released a new version of AdWords Editor that supports the new campaign type.

How To Tap Into Social Norms to Build a Strong Brand

In recent years there has been a necessary shift in the way businesses advertise themselves to consumers, thanks to the increasingly common information overload experienced by the average person. Bridget Randolph teaches you how to retain customers and create loyalty in an atmosphere where everyone else has a better offers.

Question of the week: What is an XML Sitemap and how does it impact SEO?

A standard XML Sitemap is a document which contains a list of objects (in this case web page URLs) that helps search engines to detect all the pages you have on your site.

They are important from an SEO point of view in that they help you to get all your pages into the search engine index. This allows your site to have a better chance of becoming more relevant core search terms. Remember, if a web page isn’t indexed, it will never rank.

An example of an XML Sitemap (from Commonwealth Bank) is shown below