Friday, November 17, 2006
Sitemaps
You may have heard about site maps. They generally are HTML pages that are linked from the home page and that contain some sort of link arrangement of all the pages of a web site.
What you may not have heard is that there are 2 types of site maps:
I want to consider for a moment site maps that are for the benefit of search engines. If your site is really complex, then building a good site map for search engines can be a challenge.
I just read that Google, Yahoo and MSN have agreed on a set of protocols for a search engine oriented site map: protocols. They do not use HTML but XML files and if you want to build your own site map by hand then, go to protocols to get all the details.
If, on the other hand, you want an easy way of generating a great search engine site map, then head over to RORWeb. And more specifically, head over to their site map generation tool.
I have not checked that RORWeb follows the protocols specified by Google, Yahoo and MSN, but I have used their generated site map and can say that it has worked well for me with one of my new sites (with Google and Yahoo). Being a new site, it lacks quality backlinks and so I don't expect it to rank high for a while.
Cheers
Serge
What you may not have heard is that there are 2 types of site maps:
- site maps to help your visitors find what they are looking for at your site, and
- site maps to help search engines spider your site.
I want to consider for a moment site maps that are for the benefit of search engines. If your site is really complex, then building a good site map for search engines can be a challenge.
I just read that Google, Yahoo and MSN have agreed on a set of protocols for a search engine oriented site map: protocols. They do not use HTML but XML files and if you want to build your own site map by hand then, go to protocols to get all the details.
If, on the other hand, you want an easy way of generating a great search engine site map, then head over to RORWeb. And more specifically, head over to their site map generation tool.
I have not checked that RORWeb follows the protocols specified by Google, Yahoo and MSN, but I have used their generated site map and can say that it has worked well for me with one of my new sites (with Google and Yahoo). Being a new site, it lacks quality backlinks and so I don't expect it to rank high for a while.
Cheers
Serge
