Most search engine optimization experts will likely tell you about the importance of backlinks, keyword structure, and all the other fundamentals of good SEO. Another topic that comes up all the time is that of sitemaps and most people will tell you that you should have a good sitemap for your website that is kept up to date. But that may not necessarily be the case.

Over on Search Engine Roundtable, they're highlighting a thread that discusses what happens if you choose to remove the XML sitemap completely from Webmaster tools. Conventional wisdom will say that this will have an adverse effect on your overall search engine rankings, but that might not be the case.

In fact, John Mueller of Google says that removing the URLs from a sitemap won't really hurt your rankings, because sitemap files are used "for discovering new URLs and recognizing when existing ones have changed; we don't remove URLs from the index that aren't in the Sitemap file." But that only talks about removing URLs from the sitemap and not removing the sitemap altogether.

That said, it seems that adding and removing sitemaps doesn't "dramatically impact a website," as long as you "make sure your internal link structure is good and the iste has no big technical issues." That insight comes from forum moderator GoodROI.

What do you think? Are sitemaps still important?

There are certain tools that just about every website owner is bound to use. You're probably using Google Analytics, for example, to keep track of your visitor demographics, traffic sources, and so on. Google Webmaster Tools is another one of those go-to utilities that just about everyone uses. And it just got a little bit better.

Barry Schwartz over at SE Roundtable has put up a post telling us that Webmaster Tools now comes with a couple of new features. One of them is that you can test your sitemaps before officially submitting them. Before, you had to submit the sitemap and wait to see if any issues arise. Now, you can do that ahead of time.

And it's really easy to use too. After logging into your Google Webmaster Tools account, get into Sitemaps from the Site Configuration link as you normally would. Then, click on the button at the top right with "add/test sitemap" and enter the appropriate URL. Instead of clicking on the blue button with "submit sitemap," click on the grey "test sitemap" buton.

Give Google a few moments to do its thing and then it'll tell you that the test are complete. Click to view the results and it'll give you a quick summary, telling you about the content in the sitemap and if there are any errors detected. This can be a real timesaver and it makes sure that your submitted sitemap is error-free right from the get-go!

Have you tried this new feature? What else would you change in Webmaster Tools to make it better?

If you're starting to kick of your small-medium sized business, one of the things you need for your business to be promoted worldwide is a website. It's easy to setup a website on your own, because there are so many free and basic platforms which you can choose from like Blogger, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, LiveJournal, TypePad, Yola, Weebly, etc. But there are some webmasters who are already professionals in constructing their own unique website. You just need to make your website look good, especially in terms of content, template, scripts and widgets. Videos and pictures could also attract many visitors back to your site. But no matter how good looking or professional your site is, it will be useless if you will not optimize it to search engines. Why?

Without optimizing your sites, whether it's basic or professional, you cannot drive more traffic. Search Engine Optimization is where search engines crawl your site for indexing them and include them in their SERPS (Search Engine Ranking Pages). The easiest way to optimize your site is through Google Webmaster Tools, which you need an account there. You just add your URL to their database and there are two types of verifications namely, the meta tags and the HTML code.

Meta tags are pretty simple you know, only if you know HTML. For example in Blogger, go to layout and click "Edit HTML" and just find the "" tag and put the meta tag below it. Then on Google Webmaster Tools, click "Verify" and your site will be indexed within a week or less. For the HTML file, example "google123456789", you can use it in free sites like Yola and Weebly. They have a special menu which you can put the HTML code in their tab and you're done! Your site has been indexed! Optimizing your site can take time, after your site was finally appeared on the search results, it's time for you to promote them manually through the use of SEO. This is where your site can be determined to drive traffic depending on the niche and the combination of keywords you use. So we know how Google Webmaster Tools helped us optimized our sites, and it's a good way to kick start your small-medium sized business only if you are serious about indexing and optimizing your site.