Is the User Sitemap dead?
-
There's a discussion going on in our office about sitemaps. I thought it'd be a good idea to get the thoughts of the Moz community in on it, too.
What are your thoughts? is the User Sitemap still an effective tool to utilize?
-
Are you referencing the sitemap link at the bottom of a lot of older websites? Typically those links lead to a page with links to every page on the website. This is more a of a tactic to better navigation purposes. Is this correct?
To answer your question, good question! I would be interested to hear what others say as well.
-
if users sitemaps = HTML sitemaps I think they are still useful for page discovery and ensure your site is properly crawled by google, but they are not as good as they were at passing juice and reduce the page distance. with so much semantic and LSI Google is trying to find relevant editorial links instead of just a chunk of links in a page to pass PR.
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
-
How important is anchor text in your sitemap?
I've read in a few recent articles that using keyword anchor text in your HTML sitemap is a good idea i.e. important. How important do you think it is? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Example 1: Widgets: View All Colors: Red | Blue | Green | Yellow | Orange | Purple Types: Oversized | Large | Small | Miniature Example 2: Widgets: View All Widgets Colors: Red Widgets | Blue Widgets | Green Widgets | Yellow Widgets | Orange Widgets | Purple Widgets Types: Oversized Widgets | Large Widgets | Small Widgets | Miniature Widgets
Web Design | | Choice0 -
Sitemap Question (aspx, XML, HTML)
Hey everyone! My company uses a tool called SEOQuake. We are trying to hit all of their "checkmarks" when we run a diagnosis for them. One of the only things we can not figure out how to pass is their section for Site Compliance ---> XML Sitemaps. Our client's websites that we have built are all using .aspx URL structures, and when I view them, it clearly states that it is an XML file. It has this text written at the top of the .aspx page: "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below." Does anyone know what is happening here?
Web Design | | TaylorRHawkins
Thank you!1 -
Hiding Out of Stock Products for Users
Hello I have a website having products out of stock. Right now they are not listed on the website but working with 200 status code and they are indexed in Google as well. I need to understand if they affect my website? is it negative for SEO? what would be the best way to handle out of stock products? what if they are out of stock for a long time and discontinue for future? how search engine treat those products? are they consider as hidden links as they are not accessible from website as google says every page should link from atleast one static page. Please advise
Web Design | | ShaunPhilips0 -
Fetch data for users with ajax but show it without ajax for Google
Hi, We have a thematic footer which shows similar pages links relevant to the search criteria made on a page. We want to fetch those footer similar links through ajax when users search on site but the links will be shown without using ajax when Google fetches those pages. We want to do this to improve our page load time. The links content & count will be exactly same in both cases whether Google fetches the search pages or user fetches those pages. Will this be treated as negative by Google, Can this have any negative affect on our rankings or traffic. Regards,
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
What should I know about redirecting users based on cookies?
Hi Moz! My client wants to redirect users to a basic or professional version of their site based on cookies. What do we need to do/know to make sure implementation is SEO-friendly? What if a user has cookies turned off? Are there any other obstacles? Thanks for reading!
Web Design | | DA20130 -
ECWID Ecommerce Sitemaps (Lack of)
Does anyone know if the lack of sitemaps on ECWID built sites is a negative for SEO? Does Google somehow index these sites and do they penalize because sites can't include the urls in sitemaps? Also, any idea how to build a sitemap to include ECWID shopping carts?
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Unable to submit sitemap in GWM.. Error
I recently published new EMD and installed WP on their. Now i installed the Plugin called Yoast <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> and XML Sitemap. Now whenever i am trying to submit sitemap it shows "URL restricted by robots.txt" but you can see my robots file line written below: User-agent: *
Web Design | | xplodeguru
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /wp-admin/ But still it is showing same error.. i deactivate plugin and resubmit the sitemap but still no luck.. please help0 -
Mobile Sitemap for Site with Media Queries
I'm doing SEO for a site. It uses Media Queries and the CSS to automatically resize the site for the screen size in use. I.e. the site detects the screen size of say an iPhone and the CSS knows which elements to hide for that screen size and still make it look good. This is great because it will automatically cut down the content to display nicely on small screens - obviating the need for a separate mobile site. What kind of sitemap should be generated since the urls are for desktop and mobile use? Yoast (sweet SEO) said it should have both regular and mobile style sitemap to get both the regular and mobile bots to visit, but didn't elaborate on how that sitemap should look. Do you have a recommendation for how exactly the sitemap should look? Should the sitemap have the urls all twice, i.e. once regular and once with the mobile indicator?
Web Design | | GregoryHaze1