Search Engine Friendly Site Maps
Typically, the deeper a page is on your site, the more difficult it is for the search engine spiders to find and index the page. The following example illustrates a URL that the engines would have a difficult time indexing:
www.shoes.com/sport-shoes/running/women/white/Nike. Broken down, this imaginary page is 6 levels deep on your site:
1. www.shoes.com/
2. sport-shoes/
3. running/
4. women/
5. white/
6. Nike/
In order to avoid such issues, many Web sites utilize a site map to aid the engines in indexing. In the best case scenario a site map lists all of the pages on a website, which when done properly, allows you to logically organize the content. This also simultaneously ensures that the search engines are able to reach (and thus index) all of the pages on your site. That being said, in order to reap the full benefits of a site map, it is important that it is created properly.
When creating a site map, keep the following in mind:
1. Links should be only two clicks away from the home page. This will not only allow easier access for search engine spiders but will also improve the overall usability of the website.
2. Every other page on your Web site should link to the site map unless there are over 100 pages, in which case it should be broken up into numerous mini-site maps as described in the next point.
3. It is best to limit the number of links on a site map to 100, as Google will not explore links beyond this amount. However, if you do have more than 100, in order to avoid any issues you should divide your site map into numerous mini-site maps. If you do this then two scalable options exist:
-Link to every mini-site map from, at the very least, your homepage. If possible, linking from every page on your site is preferable.
-Link a master site map to the mini-site maps. This will allow you to place a link to the master on every page that will then lead users and search engine spiders through the various mini-site maps.
4. Make sure that your site map is less than 101k of HTML code. If not, break it up into numerous mini-sitemaps as mentioned in tip #3.
When done properly a site map guarantees that all of your pages are no more than three links away from every other page. As stated before, a search engine spider can then enter any page on your site and be only two or three clicks from every other page, greatly aiding in your natural search success.
Note: If your website is particularly small, a site map might not even be necessary for SEO purposes. This scenario applies when the normal navigational structure effectively places every page within two clicks of the home page. That being said, Rise Interactive suggest always using a site map for the purpose of usability and having a scalable way to add future pages in a search engine friendly manner.
