How To Use Sitemaps Effectively
I just love it when a ‘big namers’ blog post echos and confirms my own website philosophy!
The current ‘big namer’ is Vanessa Fox, and the blog post is “Increasing Search Indexing Coverage With an XML Sitemap“
It’s a good read, and reinforces the importance of utilizing sitemaps for increased website coverage. However I was especially interested in Vanessa’s advice on how to best make use of Sitemaps, in response to a viewers blog comments question:
Amit Agarwal on 13 October, 2008
Hi Vanessa - Thanks for this informative article - the frequency field of sitemaps has always been very confusing but glad you covered it.
I was reading a recent post on SEOMoz that quoted a discussion from SMX East. It says “Put really important pages in your sitemap, rather than every page on your site. ”
Would love to hear your opinion on this.
In her reply Vanessa discusses 3 ways that sitemaps can be used:
- Put the important pages in the Sitemap.
- Put the non-indexed pages in the Sitemap.
- Put a comprehensive list of URLs in the Sitemap.
In my experience, I have found it beneficial to employ a multi-layered, combination approach. In brief, this includes, but is not limited to:
- Create one ‘comprehensive’ sitemap file listing almost all pages of your website - no ‘crazy parameter‘ laden urls, or common page urls that may not really need to be indexed, ex: form response page urls, contact page urls, mission/privacy statement page urls, etc.
- Create one ‘top level’ sitemap file listing only the main, most important areas of your website.
- Create ‘topic specific’ sitemap files listing corresponding topic relevant urls.
- If indicated, create a sitemap index file listing all of the above sitemap file urls.
I prefer to perform each Website Search Indexing task above individually, over time (days, weeks or months as appropriate), rather than submitting all of the sitemap files at once. Not because the SE’s specifically prefer it, but to give SE’s (and myself) time to review and confirm error free acceptance of each sitemap file before introducing another.
How do you Apply these Sitemap techniques to your website?
- Ready to try this yourself? - here’s a Sitemap Template to help you get started.
- Don’t have time? Contact me now for a free, no-obligation quote for your website.
