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Search engine friendly sitemaps

In general, the deeper a page is on your website (i.e,. the more links that a visitor has to click to get to a particular page), the harder it is for it to get indexed by the search engines.  For instance, the following page would have difficulty getting indexed by the search engines: www.bookwebsite.com/new-books/non-fiction/biographies/America/Ben-Franklin.  Note that this imaginary page is 6 levels deep on your site:

1. www.bookwebsite.com/
2. new-books/
3. non-fiction/
4. biographies/
5. America/
6. Ben-Franklin/

Because of this problem manywebsites employ a sitemap which lists all of the pages on one’s web site. When done properly, this allows you to logically organize the material on your website while simultaneously ensuring that the search engines are able to reach (and thus process) all of the pages on your site. With that said, it is important that you create the site map properly, otherwise you may not get the full benefit that it has to offer. Here, then, are the general facts which you need to know about creating a strategically placed site map:

1. Make sure that your site map links to every other page on your website (unless you have over 100 pages, in which case break up your site map into numerous mini-site maps)
2. Link to your site map from (at least) your home page and preferably from every page on your site (thus each page on your site is only two clicks away from any other page on your site)
3. Make sure that your site map is less than 101k of HTML code (otherwise break up the site map into numerous mini-site maps).
4. If you have to break up your site map into numerous mini-site maps then you can either:
   1. Link to every mini-site map from (at least) your home page and preferably every page on your site
   2. Have a main site map which links to the mini-site maps (your web pages will link to the site map and the site map will link to the mini-site maps).

In summary, a site map (when done properly) ensures that all of your pages are only two (or perhaps three) links away from every other page.  This means that no matter what page a search engine spider enters your site on, they are only two or three clicks from every other page on your site.  However, given that for many sites Google will not explore more than 100 outgoing links for any given web page it is best to limit the number of links on a site map to only 100 links.  This means that if your site has more than 100 pages that you should create multiple mini-site maps which combined link to all of the pages on your site.  Similarly, given that it is best to limit the size of your web pages to 100k (so as to ensure that Google indexes all of the content on those pages) you should limit the size of your site map to under 101k.  This means that even if you have less than 100 links on your site map, if the size of that web page is over 100k you should still create multiple mini-site maps which combined link to all of the apgtes on your site.  Furthermore, whenever you create multiple site maps you should make sure to link to all of your site maps from at least your home page and preferably from every page on your site.  If, for whatever reason, this is not feasible then you should create a main site map which links to each of the mini-site maps and then link to that main site map from every page on your site (or at least from your home page). 

Note: a mini-site map need not necessarily be called a site-map.  It could be that your normal navigational structure for your site can function as a series of mini-site maps if designed properly.  Whether or not this is possible will depend on the nature and scope of your website.

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This tutorial written by:
Moshe Morris
President of SEMBasics
Chief Research Analyst at Internet Marketing Initiative (www.internetmi.com)

The content on this page is based off of an article published in SearchEngineNews.com.
To learn more about Search Engine News, click here.