Site Maps
| Google say have one --> probably a good idea | |||||||||||||||||
| To see egs. Search for Site Maps in Yahoo, Google or MSN | |||||||||||||||||
| Failure to make the right kind of site maps. One of the ways that we can insure that a Search Engine Spider crawls your site deeply is to provide it a road map of your site. This road map, called a “Site Map” is a very simple page (from a design standpoint) that only serves one purpose from a Search Engine Optimizers point of view – to get those interior pages into a Search Engine's index. A Site Map is a page that contains a basic HTML link to EVERY page on that web site. Every Page, not just your main topics but every page. Site Maps do not need to be fancy (in fact, it's better if they are not), they just need to contain a logical order and links to all of your pages. How does this benefit us? Three ways . . . First, a site map gives your customers an easy navigation system to every page in your web site. Now, don't confuse the use of a site map as a replacement for logical navigation on your regular pages. You want to make sure that your site can be navigated simply and easily from any page on your site. However, some folks (a very small percentage) prefer to see the entire site's structure on one page and choose their destination from it. Second, a Site Map is a fantastic way to get a Search Engine Spider to SEE and CRAWL every single page in your site. In the last episode, we talked about optimizing different pages in your web site for different keywords. A Site Map is a perfect solution for ensuring that a Spider can get to every one of those optimized pages. Third, and this is Big: A Site Map provides an opportunity to send Link Reputation to a particular page. Now, Link Reputation is a discussion that's beyond the scope of this mini-course (in fact, we talk about it for nearly an hour in Stomping the Search Engines), but it is perhaps one of the most important factors in Off Page Search Engine Optimization. You want the links on your Site Map Page to “Say” the right thing about the pages that they are linking to. It's like a Vote. So, make sure that your Site Map is Voting correctly for all of your interior pages. Fourth, Site Maps are also an additional way to distribute Google Page Rank. If your Site Map is just one link off of the first page, it can pass a significant amount of Google Page Rank deep into your web site. This helps create a site structure where just about every internal page has the same chance of ranking well in the SERPs as your home page. Finally, Site Maps allow you to use dynamic linking strategies to control where Page Rank does and does not go throughout your site. For example, a common mistake is to have a normal link to your privacy policy on every page of your site. In actuality, giving your privacy policy page the same Page Rank as every other page of the site is a big waste of whatever Page Rank you have available. |
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| There has been much debate about the use of a sitemap. Personally, I don't prefer them, but they work wonders for the search engines. Let's take a moment to see why this is. When you create a sitemap, you essentially are making a page that contains all the important links on your site. By making sure the search engine spider crawls your sitemap, you will get all of your pages inedexed, which is critical since all pages are ranked individually. Another useful way to implement a sitemap is to place it on your error handling page. This way, if your user types in a non-existent url, or a search engine spider gets hung up or lost, both the user and a search engine should be able to find the links they were looking for. There is also debate on where a sitemap should be placed on your site. The most common placement is to have the sitemap link at the bottom of your pages, whether that means just your home page, or all your pages. Either way, you need to make sure your sitemap gets indexed to ensure the spidering of all the pages of your site. The next issue is usually how to determine if your site needs a sitemap. The general thought on this is that if you have any 2nd level links (more than 1 click to get to the page), you need a sitemap. If you have an ecommerce site, or a site that sellls services, you should have a sitemap linking to each product and service. You should never assume the search engine spider is going to find those pages on it's own, you need to make sure that you have each one listed on your sitemap. |
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