Hi Moz peeps, google said that we should have two site maps...
-
Hi Moz peeps, google said that we should have two site maps...
one for google and one for people. Now i know having a site map to submit to google for the first time is important for SEO, but is having a site map for people visitng the site help at all in terms of google's bots crawling your site?
I know it might actually help human people navigate through your site, I just want to know if by not having it or having it affects on page SEO at all,
thanks guys
-
David
I think what you are referring to is HTML sitemaps vs XML Sitemaps and the inclusion of both. Google prefers XML and people use HTML : From GWMT -
Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML Sitemap—usually called Sitemap, with a capital S—is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, Including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process.
I agree with the others, that an HTML sitemap can be helpful to visitors. For indexing, we use XML.
Best
-
Hi David, For SEO to be effective it is important that the search engine spiders and web crawlers can properly index a site. Based on your site's architecture and its links (both external and internal) the engines can establish and weight the profile of how each interacts to map out which pages have the highest significance to their index.
One of the most effective ways of encouraging full and extensive visiting and indexing of your site by the spiders is to integrate a site map (or maps) into your development. Sitemaps are an easy way for web masters to represent the structure of a site and inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. Human visitors also appreciate site maps as navigation.
An HTML sitemap is an actual page on a site containing links to the website's most important pages. Any site with anything approaching complex navigation should consider an HTML sitemap for visitors. Whilst an HTML sitemap can be read and the links followed by spiders (so some passing of link juice is involved that might affect SEO), it also has the advantage of being readable by humans as well.
A visitor might refer to an HTML site map to help them navigate when they can't find a specific page easily. This visitor readability and usability issue that allows users to locate pages within a large site will give weight to your site in the SERP's, (search engine ranking pages) as they will weight your pages favourably for catering to your users and being user-friendly.
HTML sitemaps, however offer only a general guide to a site, an overview, not necessarily containing all the links available to spider in a website. This is especially the case for websites that contain dynamically generated pages (shopping carts, etc).
editor's note: for complete post, see http://www.seoconsult.com/on-page-search-engine-optimisation/what-effect-do-xml-and-html-sitemaps-have-in-relation-to-seo.html
I hope that you r query has been solved.
-
Hi David,
If you have a good structure on your website then there is no need for a HTML sitemap. By good structure I mean, is every important page on your site easily accessible within 2 clicks from any other page on your website? Are your menu's SEO friendly? Are your main products/services highlighted on your home page in summary? I do not use an HTML sitemap on any of my sites, I just make sure that Google can access every page that is important to me no matter where they land on my site.
-
Hello,
A site map for people will not only help visitors find your content easier but it will also help at SEO, because it improves the way your data is linked internally - increasing the number of internal inbound links.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does Google Understand H2 As Subtitle?
I use some HTML 5 tags on my custom template. I implement <header class="entry-header-outer"> Flavour & Chidinma – 40 Yrs 40 Yrs by Flavour & Chidinma </header> html code. h1 tag serves as the title, while h2 tag servers as the subtitle of the post. Take a look at it here: https://xclusiveloaded.com/flavour-chidinma-40-yrs/ I want to know if it's ok or should I remove the h2 tag. Guys, what is your thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Kingsmart4 -
Google Answer Box
I optimized several pages using Rand's post on Google Answer Box: https://moz.com/blog/how-to-appear-in-googles-answer-boxes-whiteboard-friday How long after the page is indexed should it appear? Lastly, how long should I wait before determining it will not get an answer box and reconfigure the page? No bad answers 🙂 TY KJr
On-Page Optimization | | KevnJr0 -
To avoid the duplicate content issue I have created new urls for that specific site I am posting to and redirecting that url to the original on my site. Is this the right way to do it?
I am trying to avoid the duplicate content issue by creating new urls and redirecting them to the original url. Is this the proper way of going about it?
On-Page Optimization | | yagobi210 -
Strange google indexing behaviour
Hi all Looking for a second opinion on a strange issue with has occurred on my site. The site is a magento store and because I am using all the default merchant descriptions at the moment I have noindexed the product pages (there are 300k products, the plan is to rewrite the content as we go, starting with most popular sellers). The Gbot is blocked from the pages and all the products have header tag. We forgot to noindex the popular search terms page on the site and as a result google has indexed some search result pages - we may keep this open, not sure yet, We are seeing a very strange thing in the serps. Google has indexed the search result pages, as mentioned above, however, the description and title tag being used do not belong to that page, they belong to the product page the search result links to. If i do a search in google for the indexed pages i get the categories and lots of, what appears to be, product pages. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:arropa.co.uk/store&espv=2&biw=1536&bih=772&ei=LE5xVd3qA4HlUNnggKgH&start=250&sa=N One would assume that a page listed with the title of Ladies 1 Pair Young Trasparenze Mumbai Animal Print . and the description of Come on, program a little of your crazy side! Part of the edgy, sassy Young Trasparenze Medley, these soft touch, nontransparent stockings function a crazy, (along with the price) would be an entry for that individual product. However, clicking on that product opens up a search results page (very slowly as the site is processing an update still - it is not for public use thus far) which can be seen here http://arropa.co.uk/store/catalogsearch/result/?q=+ladies+1+pair+young+trasparenze+mumbai+animal+print+tights+75+off+military+l+ yes, the search result page is for that particular item but nowhere on the page is the title, description and price, nor has it ever been. Am a little puzzled about this and what it would do re duplicate content as im using the manufacturer data at present. Ideally i would like to keep the search results pages open. Any thoughts would be most welcome. Couple of things to note. Im aware the site is too slow for general public use. It will be fully cached once running, as i say, it has 300k+ products so isn't small. Also, am aware that there are no images. They exist but we are moving the images around, hence being down. Always a fun task when there are 25gb of the things!! Many thanks Carl
On-Page Optimization | | WonkyDog0 -
Any idea how Google is doing this? Is it schematic? http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/28/google-adds-full-restaurant-menus-to-its-search-results-pages/
Google is now showing menus on select searches. Any idea how they are getting this information? I would like to make sure my clients get visibility this way.
On-Page Optimization | | Ron_McCabe0 -
List of Google recognised abbreviations?
Does anyone know of a list/resource of abbreviations recognised by Google? For example does Google recognise w/ as with? Andy
On-Page Optimization | | AndyMacLean0 -
Why does Google show old title?
I made some changes to title tags on a clients site over a month ago. Google has since crawled all the pages that the changes were made to. Here's the problem. For some of the pages, the old title is still showing in search results. Why does Google do this? 2) What can I do about it?
On-Page Optimization | | eli.boda0 -
Should I Remove This Subdirectory From Google?
On my site, I have a subdirectory. It posts articles from a bunch of websites that my readers are interested in & links back to all of those sites. There is no original content in it. There are over 1700 indexed pages in this subdirectory. The rest of my site has about 500 (all original content). The search engine traffic for this subdirectory only accounts for 3.9% of my sites overall visits. Should I consider removing this subdirectory? Could all the duplicate content be hurting the rankings of my legit pages? What do you all think?
On-Page Optimization | | PedroAndJobu0