How to design a site map page for users (not for Google)
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I would like to design a site map for my visitors so they can have a quick view on the whole content of the website.
2 questions :
1 - is this kind of site map can help in terms of SEO ?
2 - if so, what are the best practices to design it ?
Thanks in advance.
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User orientated sitemaps can be useful, but it is dependent on the site. Certainly I remember coding them (and writing them out manually - the horror!) for a long time before Google et al started reading xml sitemaps.
Depending on the site structure they can use useful for SEO too. I would say this is particularly the case where for medium sized sites that do not have the best site architecture. In those cases a sitemap can provide a nice fast route in to deeper content for spiders. Potentially useful.
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I guess the answer is to make the site map as "usable" and intuitive for the user. This will largely be down to the number of levels in your site architecture and the number of pages. If you have thousands you won't want to show them all, but then a site search tool would make more sense.
The example you have given is fine in all these respects, but its for a basic site.
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We use the standalone version from XML site maps which generate our sitemaps daily - (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/). They have a free version on their site that you can use to generate a sitemap from the web. Their are other services like theirs out there.
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