Could someone tell me how what having a site map will do for you in terms of SEO? Where should I have one? thanks.
A site map is a "Map" of your site which gives the SE's (and visitors if they bother) a complete list of all of the pages on your site so you know for sure that every page of your site has a link to get it spidered. It does not matter where the sitemap is located as long as it's linked off of the home page at the very least. It's the best way to fully invite the spiders to surf your site.
Usually most useful for large sites or sites that have deep links, which gives the search engines one page of direct links to every page on the site. Helps the search engines find all the pages easily. Some very large sites may need to break up the site map into several pages, but it still gives the search engines easier access to all the deep pages. Put a link to the site map on your homepage only. Make the site map simple (in terms of html) and clean. Validate that page so you are sure that it is easily readable by the search engines.
Ya its usually a good idea if you have a store or something else. It helps to crawl and indexed the whole website in the search engine
Hey Donna, when you say put the link to the site map on only the front page what's the reason? I currently have mine linked to on all the pages but what you're saying is very interesting. If there's a need to change it I'd love to know Ian
i always heard it's better to link to the sitemap from everypage of your site... (that way google views it as an 'authority' or 'important' page)
The only reason I say that is because the goal (for me) is just to make sure Google finds the site map, and putting it just on the home page is all it takes to accomplish that goal. I can see where there could be uses for having it on every page, but that just wouldn't be my internal link strategy. If it works for you, that's a good thing.
I find a site map to be useful even for sites with 10-20 pages. They are good spider food and force you to make sure your are linked to every page.
That makes sense. I just thought maybe you knew something I didn't, and I'm always open to learning something I don't know Ian
For larger sites, a site map, if done properly, can also be a navigation aid to human visitors... for that reason, having it linked from each page can be an advantage.