Sitemap or not sitemap...?

Hi All!

Quick question: I have created a Sitemap in xml for google and I have submited it.

I have more than 500 pages indexed in google.

Is it really usefull to create another sitemap (an html file dynamically generated with php containing all the urls of the website and accessible in the footer....?)

I submited my google sitemap one month ago and only 500 pages indexed (over 1900-2000) it doesn't seems good...

Will this help better & faster indexing....?

Thanks a lot per advance for all your feedbacks!

Anto

 

AFAIK the purpose of the 'extra' html sitemap (the non xml one in addition to your xml sitemap) is to assist Yahoo in indexing your site.

Note: I'm repeating something I read on the Warriors forum and that info is a bit dated: translation - I'm not sure if what I just said is still current

 

Hi LocalGoogleGuru!

Thanks for your feedback! I was asking this question because I noticed that Google has indexed only pages accessible by less than 4 links in depth in my website.

=> Those webpages appear as indexed in the xml file (in the webmaster tool) But I think Google is not using my xml sitemap at all to discover the website...

For example, (I run a B2B niche directory) it has indexed only pages of companies starting with "a"...

Thnaks for your help!

Anto

 

You have to be patient with indexing it does take time. It seems like your on track.

 

Cool! Thanks Maybe I'm too impatient I'll wait!

 

A sitemap is only a small part of what needs to be done. Google doesn't go to a site and say "Oh, I'm tired today so I'm not going to go through this entire site. Think I'll just check a few pages and leave".

Sounds like you have some broken links, do not use the "no follow" tag, or made good use of the robots.txt file. Check all of that and see what happens.

 

Hi Zeekstern!

Thanks a lot for your feedback. I don't think I have broken links (it says everything is ok in the google webmaster tool). I use the no follow on only one link:

User can browse by common or scientific names for products. I use "no folloow" because basically it is the same list with data in different columns... so it is duplicate content at the end...

how can be used the robot txt? I have only one folder

Thanks a lot for your feedback

 

All in one directory? Sounds like you must be using XSP

If I were you, I would manually check the links for the pages that aren't getting indexed. At least spot check some of the more important ones. On each page, view the source and make sure you aren't using the noindex tag. Then follow the link to the next page, etc etc.

Sure you can use the robot file to exclude pages:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /page1.html
Disallow: /page2.htm
Disallow: /page1002.php

Of course, replace the page with your page name.

If you want to see how or if other sites use the robots.txt, just type in their url and add the robots.txt. theirdomain.com/robots.txt

If you are using the nofollow on only one link, you better do a little research on the nofollow tag. You would be surprised at the difference it makes with regards to Google ranking.

 

Hi zeekstern!

What is XSP? Is it a script for directories?
Sorry to disapoint you... I coded my own script... I took me over a year... I'll have a look on the nofollow

Thanks!

 

You really need to wait and watch, indexing is usually very slow unfortunately.

 

I think you're right. Any way, I put a "light" sitemap (it allows the google crawler to access my content a litlle bit easier (1 save 1 link in depth)).

Today, more than 700 pages are indexed and I've got an average of 40 more pages indexed per day So I think this is quite good :-D

Thanks

Anto

 

XSP is XsitePro. A website development software.

 

I submitted one, haven't noticed an increase in traffic yet.

 

You will have a long wait!
The sitemap does not have anything to do with traffic.

 

Hi Photon!

1st step:
The sitemap is mainly for google to let him know all the url you have in your website. This allows the bot to directly find your urls without having to crawl your website.

2nd step:
IF Google finds that your content is "interesting" and homogeneous with meta balises like title, description (to be verified by an expert, not sure the balise keywords is still in use!) then it will be put in the Google index.

3rd step:
An user will search on Google and will have thousands of results... If your content is relevant and interesting, you will be in the firsts results for the keywords... If not... It will be like you are not indexed... means you don't exist.

Then (to be verified also) I think google uses his statistics to adjust your position in the google results by analysing users behaviour on your website (if all users stay less than one second on your website, it probably means that your content is not interesting/relevant/etc.)

===============

To increase your traffic, you have to:
- provide relevant/unique/intereting/up-to-date content
- Start link exchange strategy to get visitors from other websites (but tiers website will accept only if you provide them with additional/complementary value... So I think all is about the content...

For the moment, based on my experience (I'm a beginer on the web and this is my first website (from scratch)) I observed the following:

- 4-5 visitors daily in average just after my gol-live.
- 27-30 one month after having submited my site in directories, after having sent email to people that might be interested by it, by having done some Twitet, etc...

Hoipe this will help you, do not hesitate to ask question, it always good to have something helping you. What is your website?

Anto

 

probably that problems is about updating crawl information .....
so just be patient for waiting teh update i guesss ...

 

Yea... I got 100 page less in the google index in one day
- but I know why!
=> I changed a litlle bit my urls (it means that a single page was crawled 2 times with 2 differents urls. When google noticed that one was not accessible anymore while crawling the website (it was still available when putting the old url directly in the browser) he removed it

Everything is OK, I think this need time.