Hi, Let’s assume we have 100 pages long catalog of products, say, 10 items per page. What kind of paging / navigation through the catalog you would use to make spider to index it the fastest way possible. Please share your thoughts. Regards, CKelvin
A html sitemap with every page linking to it. Maybe in your case you would need more than one sitemap.
Do you mean html page (a sitemap) placed on the same website, with 100 links on it linked to individual pages of said catalog? And what about optimal paging on the catalog itself?
Yes. A html page (sitemap). It doesnt need to have the standard 100 links on each sitemap, you can get creative if you want. Run a search on Google for sitemap.html and take a look at the layouts of different sitemaps that other sites use. I think the most important factor to remember is the tips that Google give.
I think it is a good point, thank you. However, real-life situation can be more complex – presence of dozens of catalogs on one site makes this approach not very practical, I guess. So, I think that “creative†paging on the catalog itself can help too. Any ideas on that front?
It is complex when it comes to a larger site but remember you can use more than one sitemap and they dont even need to be called sitemaps. For my bigger sites I usually use relevant links at the bottom of each page, maybe use links to products in the same category of your catalog?
Yes, it can help too, I agree. But what about on-page paging navigation itself? For instance, it is definitely not a good idea to have just “Next page†on the 100-page catalog as a way of advancing to the next page, for either a human or a spider. Or another extreme - placing links to all 100 catalog pages on every catalog page; will look like a link spam and will dissolve power of other links. It means the good way is something in between, my guess. For instance, can this type of paging links 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |10 … 20 | 30 | 40 | 100 (by injecting deeper paging links) be in help?