Sitemaps
and Hypertext Links: "Food" for Search Engine
Robots
Daria Goetsch
Search Innovation
March
10, 2003
Sitemaps
and hypertext links are "food" for search engine
robots. We will look at the value of text links
for optimal spidering, and the importance of using
a sitemap in order to help search engine robots
reach your website's deeper pages.
Hypertext
Links
Search
engine robots are not terribly sophisticated.
They cannot click a button, submit a form, pull
down a menu, or perform any other type of online
"user interaction" that might be used by a human
visitor. Robots are able to index the text on
a page and click through hypertext links. For
this reason, adding navigational text links to
your web pages (often located at the bottom of
the page) provides the search engine robots with
another means to click through the links of your
web pages when it cannot access these other types
of navigation.
No
matter how great your JavaScript menu system is,
the search engine robots cannot use it. They can
follow "plain old" hyperlinks, and that's about
it. Since the ability to move around on your site
is vital to the robots' successful indexing of
your content, you want to make it as easy as possible
for them to visit all of your pages. Use of text
links at the bottom of your pages, while hardly
cutting-edge, is one of the best ways to make
sure that the search engine robots can move around
on your site. Be sure to include links to your
site's principal pages on all the pages in your
site. Always remember to put a link to your sitemap
page here too.
Sitemaps
A
sitemap page is a supercharged version of the
bottom-of-the-page hypertext links. The sitemap
provides "food" for a hungry search engine robot.
A sitemap page will at very least have links to
all of the major pages on your site. Depending
on the size of your site, it may actually link
to all of your pages. This means that once the
robot gets to the sitemap page, it can visit every
page on your entire site. Having all of the content
of your site included in the search engine database
is a good thing: you are much more likely to come-up
in the search engine results when somebody is
performing a search related to your topic.
A
good sitemap will:
- Provide
text links to at least the most important pages
on your site; depending on the size of the site,
it may have links to every page
- Give
a short explanation of each page on your site,
to inform your visitors about your website
- Give
your visitors the information they need when
lost in your website, and show them how to reach
the page they are looking for
- Provide
a pathway for the search engine robots to follow
in order to reach your most important pages
- Provide
important keyword phrases in the sitemap text
and hypertext links that help the automated
search engine robot "understand" what the page
is about
- Help
search engine robots find static landing pages
that then link to dynamically generated pages
they may not otherwise find
Even
if your website is small, add a sitemap for your
visitors and for the search engine robots.
To
make your sitemap most attractive to the search
engine robots and your human visitors, be sure
to include descriptive text along with the page
URLs and links. Use your keywords in that text,
including appropriate content for each of the
pages to which you link. Be careful not to overuse
your keyword phrases, though, or you may be penalized
in the rankings. Remember that this is a map that
will be used by both search engine robots and
your human visitors. If the content of the page
makes sense to the people who visit your site,
chances are it will make sense to the visiting
robots as well.
When
you make it easy for your visitors to navigate
your site, they will find what they are looking
for. When you make it easy to search engine robots
to move around on your site, you increase your
chances of being favorably listed in their search
results.
About the Author:
Daria Goetsch is the founder
and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search
Innovation Marketing (http://www.searchinnovation.com),
a Search Engine Promotion company serving small
businesses. Besides running her own company, Daria
is an associate of WebMama.com, an Internet web
marketing strategies company. She has specialized
in search engine optimization since 1998, including
three years as the Search Engine Specialist for
O'Reilly & Associates, a technical book publishing
company.
Copyright © 2003 Search Innovation Marketing.
All Rights Reserved.
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