Thread: Building a site map

Ok, I have never done this in the past but someone put it to me like this: (from the perspective of developing website architecture i.e. flow of PR etc.)

SITEMAPS ARE CRITICAL, if properly implemented = link on every page of site which links to a sitemap which links out to every important page on website. all pages on website are 1 page away from sitemap-

So how do I go about creating one?

Thanks in advance.

There are two wildly different things which are both called sitemaps. This is Google's fault. They introduced a new defacto standard for XML "sitemaps" for their robots to read. The trouble is that the term "sitemaps" was already in common use by webmasters to describe human readable pages which help people find content on your web site.

If you want to create an XML sitemap for the robots, there are dozens of tools to help you. Which one you should pick depends upon the size of your site and what CMS it uses.

What is the size of your site and what CMS does it use?

If you want to built a sitemap for humans, the best way to do it is by hand. Of course, you still have to create an initial list of the pages on your site, and tools can be useful for that.

Alternatively, if you have a well-designed site, sitemaps should not be necessary and really won't help. XML sitemaps really help spiders crawl sites that are built poorly (navigation using Javascript and Flash). Human readalbe sitemaps also help humans find things on sites that are simply organized poorly. But, to my mind, it's better to fix your site than to implement a redundant navigation system.

I had no idea there were two types but the one I am looking it is a human readable one. I might hold off for a while as I believe my websites are well-designed.

There are many sitemap generators which can be used. One such is on this link

www.freesitemapgenerator.com/

Generally, for google submission, I use xml-sitemaps.com. The default one for the web site is automatically created by my CMS.

If you are using a content mangement system - CMS - get a sitemap generator that is designed to work with your cms.

Use the script to build the sitemap.

Submit the sitemap to your google webmaster tools

Originally Posted by niceboy

Generally, for google submission, I use xml-sitemaps.com. The default one for the web site is automatically created by my CMS.

I used the xml-sitemaps.com site to generate my sitemap.

The issue is, it only has 4 links on it, but I have more than 20 pages on my site.

The reason it did not pick up on the other 16 pages is that, I am not linking to them from my homepage.

So, can I manually add in the other 16 pages? Would that be allowed?

Originally Posted by 5starpix

I used the xml-sitemaps.com site to generate my sitemap.

The issue is, it only has 4 links on it, but I have more than 20 pages on my site.

The reason it did not pick up on the other 16 pages is that, I am not linking to them from my homepage.

So, can I manually add in the other 16 pages? Would that be allowed?

The lack of links from the home page is not the problem. You have a linking structure problem in your site that the xml-sitemap spider cannot follow. I have used xml-sitemaps.com probably a hundred times and have never seen a problem with finding pages unless there is a problem with the site itself. It is also a good tool for troubleshooting problems with linking structures.

Are you using an unusual linking structure? Stick to the standards for relative links or use fully formed absolute URLs in the hyperlinks.

Are you using JavaScript links in a menu? If so, get rid of them.

Are you using redirects for some of the links? If so, get rid of them.

Do you actually have hyperlinks leading to those pages or are they floating pages?

Yes, you can manually enter the remaining 16 page URLs into the XML sitemap, but you should fix the site problem first.