Site Map

Hi All

I am currently managing several websites but none of them have a site map. Just wondering is it important to have one? How would it affect my websites as some of my websites are currently having a PR3.

For your information, all my websites are organized in a "flat structure" manner

Thanks for your advice.

 

Hi Gary,

It helps spiders index your pages.

If you have many pages, it can work like a table of contents for human visitors.

If you have several dozen pages or more, I suggest creating a site map.

~Newbie Shield~

 

Try this website to create your sitemap
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

It is simple and easy.

 

Sitemaps basically help the search engines know where your content is. It's extremely helpful for them to have them and can cause your website you're attempting to promote to get indexed that much quicker and better if you have one. Also there may be places on your site that wouldn't normally get indexed by Google's spider, one of the first places that Google does check is the sitemap provided you have one tethered with your igoogle account.

I'd recommend going to www.igoogle.com and logging in with your google account. From there you'll need to add your domain name and verify that you own the domain name. From there, it'll ask you to verify via either an HTML file or a meta tag on your index or root of your server. Do this then tell Google to verify the domain name. Once done, you'll have it set.

You'll then be able to have google set up with your XML sitemap file in order to index your sitemap. This does seriously help with SEO purposes and is strongly recommended for most sites to have them that have a dozen or more pages to index.

Also if you haven't done so, if there are places on your site that you don't want Google to index, you'll want to set a robots.txt file on the root of your server (Usually Public_HTML) so that you can have some stuff left private out of searches.

Hope this information was informative enough to help you out making the decision you need to make and help you do what you need to should you decide to get the sitemap done.

 

GlennELee: get indexed


Of all the advice on how to get traffic on this forum, this one is rarely mentioned.
A sitemap.xml submitted to Google is the single best first step,
then ping any new pages and update your sitemap.xml file if it changes.

A sitemap.html version is helpful for visitors, or an xml reader for them.
You can get a lot more mileage from your visitors if they have a map.

Another trick is to re-direct "404 File Not Found" to sitemap.html
Even if they don't find what they were looking for they might find something they like.
You can create a custom sitemap.html with pictures and ads.

By the way, pictures get indexed too and may bring more traffic than words.
You can exclude file types or directories in your robots.txt file if you want to hide them.

 

definitely create and submit an XML sitemap for major search engines. you can do it manually or with onpage SEO tools like website auditor

 

Having a sitemap on your website is highly recommended, as it enables google and other search engines to quickly discover and index any new pages that you have added to your website.

It also enables visitors to quickly find what their looking for on your website.

If you have not got a sitemap added, then make that your next job.

 

make sure you create and submit an xml sitemap to Google webmaster tools and you'll see your content get ranked pretty fast on the SERPs

 

If you use sitemap on your website then it help in fast indexing in search engines so you must use xml sitemap for better seo.

 

This is one of the single most important actions for a website to get ranked and stay ranked.
Having an RSS feed is great for getting ranked but having the Sitemap.xml file is critical.
And it should be in the root directory if you want all of your content to be found.
Example: http://www.work-at-home-forum.com/Sitemap.xml

Per Google>
Sitemaps are particularly helpful if:

• Your site has dynamic content.
• Your site has pages that aren't easily discovered by Googlebot during the crawl process—for example, pages featuring rich AJAX or images.
• Your site is new and has few links to it. (Googlebot crawls the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn't well linked, it may be hard for us to discover it.)
• Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156184

p.s. As stated in a previous post, a Sitemap.HTML is very helpful to people visiting your website.
XML is for robots, HTML is for people.

 

A sitemap for any website is useful. Because its helps your website in crawling. So do make this ..

 

Indirectly It helps search engines to crawl and index your site.So having one is useful but IF you haven't then its just fine.

 

A sitemap is an XML document on your website’s server that basically lists each page on your website. It tells search engines when new pages have been added and how often to check back for changes on specific pages. For example, you might want a search engine to come back and check your homepage daily for new products, news items, and other new content.

 

Hmm, think we have a problem Houston (or Vishal)
The sitemap.xml for this forum is missing!

Work at Home Forum - Error
The requested page could not be found.

 

This brings up the question of the location of the actual .XML file the PHP loads.
A reason sites have moved to the PHP version is to avoid granting write privileges the root directory.
(meaning the sitemap.XML is stored in a hidden folder only the php can read)
In order to satisfy the search engine crawlers one more step is needed.
By default crawlers look for a sitemap.XML file in the root directory.

Add a line to your robots.txt file identifying how to find the sitemap.

Sitemap: http://www.Work-At-Home-Forum.com/sitemap.php

That will cause the crawlers to read the PHP file which loads the XML.
Then sit back and watch your stats climb!
It's Just2EZ?

NOTE: I would also add a server side 301 redirect for /sitemap.xml to /sitemap.php
That way any links to the old xml will forward to the new php version.

 

Don't forget to submit your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools

 

Also try to use custom 404 error page to improve your user performance and reducing bounce rate..

 

Agreed, I use a 404 that is a sitemap so they can find what they missed or something else.
Sometimes I just use a cute "Oops, my bad!" and a link to the sitemap or home page.
A Contact form on the 404 is also a good option for feedback and as a capture page.
Don't lose traffic because of a bad link, take advantage of it!

p.s. Duh, I forgot to mention a "Search Box" on your 404 page!
You can even take it a step farther with an adsense search box.
If you don't have what they're looking for Google may pay you.
Just another EZ way to convert bad traffic into good money.