You’ve probably spent a huge amount of time working on search engine optimization to produce quality and compelling content, include targeted keywords on each page, get incoming links but never once spared a thought for generating a sitemap in your SEO campaign.
HTML Sitemap
In general, HTML Sitemaps can be very handy for your human visitors, and it’s a nice additional way to help search engines make sure that they know about all of your pages as well.
XML Sitemap
It’s always a good idea for your XML Sitemap file to include all pages which you want to have indexed. If you have pages such as tag or archive pages which you prefer not to have indexed, it’s recommended to add a “no index” robots meta tag to the pages (and of course, not to include them in the Sitemap file).
If your CMS or website doesn’t allow you to generate XML Sitemaps, there are lots of tools available online and here’s one of them
Win/win Situation
This is a win-win situation for you, your website visitors and the search engines. Put simply you’re nuts if you’ve not included a sitemap as part of your overall website promotion strategy.
The good news is that it’s never too late to start. You can create a sitemap page today but there are some rules to creating an effective sitemap that you need to follow.
General Guidelines for URLs in XML Sitemaps
- A Sitemap can contain a list of URLs or a list of Sitemaps.
- A Sitemap file can contain no more than 50,000 URLs and be no larger than 10MB when uncompressed. If your Sitemap is larger than this, break it into several smaller Sitemaps.
- Specify all URLs using the same syntax. For instance, if you specify your site location as http://www.example.com/, your URL list should not contain URLs that begin with http://example.com/. And if you specify your site location as http://example.com/, your URL list should not contain URLs that begin with http://www.example.com/.
- Do not include session IDs in URLs.
- Do not include direct image URLs in Sitemaps.
- The Sitemap URL must be encoded for readability by the webserver on which it is located.
More information can be found at Google Webmaster Central.
Andreas Pazer (152)
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Jafar Dhada (128)
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bbrian017 (62)
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Twitter: Murray
There are a few great WordPress plugins that take care of both sitemaps and I agree, having both will benefit humans and the robots.
You can use the html sitemap as part of your blog while the XML works perfectly with the blogs.
.-= Murlu´s last blog ..Become A Guest Blogging Superhero =-.
Twitter: webtastecomau
I usually use Google XML Sitemaps plugin (XML) and Dagon design Sitemap Generator Plugin (HTML). That will do the job for us.
Twitter: bbrian017
Google has come a long way and can manage to index your entire website even if you don’t use a site map. I guess it’s still a good idea but I really don’t understand why. Perhaps it’s more appropriate for flash website or any website that doesn’t provide good internal linking. I don’t know if it’s just me but I think they are over rated lol.
Twitter: webtastecomau
i think there might be some URLs which may not be found by Google’s normal crawling process. by submitting xml sitemap, it increases your site coverage and ensures that Google knows about your pages. if you got a complex site structure, that might again be useful. as one of best practices, we are still doing for our clients.
Twitter: moonheart85
I have used plug in for create xml sitemap for my blog and it is working good now.
Well Bbrain I request you to write such type of informative article on your blog rather than write other article.
.-= chandan´s last blog ..29 tips to promote your business website freely =-.
Twitter: webtastecomau
that’s great…good on you, chandan
.-= William´s last blog ..Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking Code Rolled Out =-.
Twitter: BlazingMinds
I submit my sitemap via the Sitemaps XML wordpress plugin that goes to Google, Yahoo, Bing and few other, but since blogging I have neglected a HTML sitemap page!
.-= Blazing Minds´s last blog ..Shopping For My Dogs At Nutrecare Pet Supplies =-.