You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “The Importance of the Humble Sitemap”.
The Importance of the Humble Sitemap
New to the Search Marketing Standard Blog?
Subscribe to our blog via our RSS feed and receive updates and tips.
WHAT’S NEXT?
- Read more Organic articles.
- Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for practical how-to, industry stats and expert advice.
- All articles are available for republishing as long as you provide a link back to the original article.
- Become a premium member to get the print and digital magazine and premium content.
About the Author
Rebecca Appleton (166 Posts)
Rebecca is the managing director of search engine optimization agency Dakota Digital a full-service agency offering SEO, online PR, web copywriting, media relationship management, and social media strategy. Rebecca works directly with each client to increase online visibility, brand profile, and search engine rankings. She has headed a number of international campaigns for large brands.
3 Comments
Share Your Thoughts
GET PUBLISHED
Looking to promote your business and grow your industry credibility? Come write for us!
SIGN UP
Hi Rebecca, It’s funny to think people are so obsessed with the latest trends that they forget about SEO basics. It’s similar to the get rich quick schemes, where everyone is trying to achieve wealth instantly with no work invested. My experience over the last 9 years has led me in the opposite direction.
While I pay attention to the trends, it can be counter productive to be on the bleeding edge. The fundamental SEO techniques that we used 3-5 years ago still work. New tactics have been added and others have been updated, but the core remains unchanged.
What does change however is the Flavor of the Month “Tricks”
This is a losing game that will have people chasing their tails for years. Your points on sitemaps are spot on, and I only have one thing to add. Well, more like one thought to finish . . .
You mention linking to an HTML sitemap with a followed link from the homepage, then using nofollow on the rest of the pages. This will not only pass PageRank, but it also helps flatten your sites profile, or link depth. We used to say that no page should be more than three clicks from the entry point. That’s Home/ Category/ Products/ Details. With bigger sites the depth can be an issue, as some studies have shown the Google-bot doesn’t deep index. One of the first reasons for using xml sitemaps!
Having your HTML sitemap, or sitemaps linked off your homepage, makes every page two clicks deep. I worked with an auto parts retailer and implemented this strategy with great results!
Good reminders. Always enjoy your articles.
Can you make any recommendations about the priority weighting in the sitemap?
Thanks,
Rob
A site-map can be referred to as a graphical representation of the whole structure of a website. You can find two different types of sitemaps. The first type is utilized to help visitors to navigate the website and the other is carried out in XML. XML sitemaps are known as sitemap with a capital ‘S’. These are widely utilized by google to gather a lot of information about the site.