Keeping the Navigation on the Sitemap HTML Page?
-
Hey everyone. We are about to create a sitemap.html page and have always just kept the site theme in place and put the sitemap in the "content" section of the page, with the header navigation, sidebars and footer in place.
Well, now with the new "only first link counts" Google rule, wouldn't it be better to just have a "plain" html sitemap page without any other links on it?
-
I totally agree with the notion that User Experience dictates keeping it in a regular site template. And an html page devoted to being a sitemap is supposed to be for users, not search engines. The days of having one page with nothing but links should be over in everyone's mind anyhow. If all a page does is provide links, with no content around them, the SEO value of all those links is minor now.
Then we can talk about how much value those sitemap on-page links have anyhow - if you've got fifty or five hundred links on that page, they're not passing very much value for SEO, regardless of whether there's top navigation, or anything else on the page.
-
If you are a visitor/user on your site would you like to see a blank page with the site structure or a innerpage (header/footer) with the structure in the body area ?
If you build it for the Search Engine it will be good to strip the rest of the "normal" site elements like your footer, header and side bars if any but if you do it for the users - to help them navigate easier from this page then you should keep the site look and feel for a better user experience.
More then that since - at least Google - will take in consideration as far as ranking and signals sites that are build to improve the user experience I think your best bet is to go with a normal inner page with the structure of the site in the body area.
If you have authority your sitemap html will get indexed fast with no issues even if you have 100+ links on that page including your main navigation and footer links.
In my opinion you should definitely go with the normal theme and place the sitemap/structure in the "content area" .
Here is a link from google webmaster tool set that might help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6g5hoBYlf0
(to clear the issue with the indexation aspect)
Hope it helps !
-
Your navigation, header and footer should be as seo friendly as whatever your html sitemap links would be. But really this is distracting from the content of the page. I like one column, no navigation on your html page. Keep the look of your site. Keep the header and footer to look nice.
Have a look at how the pros do it: http://www.bruceclay.com/sitemap.htm
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
-
Is it ok to repeat a (focus) keyword used on a previous page, on a new page?
I am cataloguing the pages on our website in terms of which focus keyword has been used with the page. I've noticed that some pages repeated the same keyword / term. I've heard that it's not really good practice, as it's like telling google conflicting information, as the pages with the same keywords will be competing against each other. Is this correct information? If so, is the alternative to use various long-winded keywords instead? If not, meaning it's ok to repeat the keyword on different pages, is there a maximum recommended number of times that we want to repeat the word? Still new-ish to SEO, so any help is much appreciated! V.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vitzz1 -
Few pages without SSL
Hi, A website is not fully secured with a SSL certificate.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdenaSEO
Approx 97% of the pages on the website are secured. A few pages are unfortunately not secured with a SSL certificate, because otherwise some functions on those pages do not work. It's a website where you can play online games. These games do not work with an SSL connection. Is there anything we have to consider or optimize?
Because, for example when we click on the secure lock icon in the browser, the following notice.
Your connection to this site is not fully secured Can this harm the Google ranking? Regards,
Tom1 -
Hreflang in header...should I do a Sitemap?
A client implemented hreflang tags in the site header. MOZ says you aren't supposed to do an hreflang Sitemap as well. My question is how should I do a Sitemap now (or should I do one at all)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | navdm0 -
How does this company rank this page?
If you Google the keyword "used iPhone 5," the URL ranking #1 in the SERP is the following: http://buy.gazelle.com/buy-used-iphone-5/ This page has zero content on it and a button on it that takes you to a category page with the iPhone 5 pre selected. My question is **how does this page outrank the sites products pages? **I ran a backlink analysis and don't see any links pointing to that URL. Also, **how does this site deal with its duplicate content issues? **If you look at the following URLs, you'll see a bunch of duplicate content in the "Key Features" section below the fold. http://buy.gazelle.com/buy/used/iphone-5-16gb-at-t http://buy.gazelle.com/buy/used/iphone-5-16gb-sprint If you think about it, this site will have different product pages for each variations of cellphone carrier and cellphone storage capacity. So for an iPhone 5, they will have 15 pages! Any insight into this would be much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cody_West0 -
Max Amout Of HTML Pages In A Folder
What's the maximum amount of html pages that one should put in a folder, to get the best SEO GoggleBot crawl? I'm aware that there's a limit of 10,000 on most servers, but was curious to know if a lesser amount of pages would be better, for crawling and indexing purposes. Also curious on peoples opinions on whether .jpg and .gif files should follow similiar rules.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alrockn0 -
Site Navigation
Hi Mozzers, I am an SEO at uncommongoods.com and looking for your opinion on our site nav. Currently our nav & URLs are structured in 3 levels. From the top level down, they are: 1. Category ex: http://www.uncommongoods.com/home-garden 2. Subcat ex: http://www.uncommongoods.com/home-garden/bed-bath 3. Family ex:http://www.uncommongoods.com/home-garden/bed-bath/bath-accessories Right now, all levels are accessible from our top nav but we are considering removing the family pages. If we did that, Google could still find & crawl links to the family pages, but they would have to drill down to the subcat pages to find them. Do you guys think this would help or hurt our SEO efforts? Thanks! -Zack
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | znotes0 -
Duplicate page content and Duplicate page title errors
Hi, I'm new to SeoMoz and to this forum. I've started a new campaign on my site and got back loads of error. Most of them are Duplicate page content and Duplicate page title errors. I know I have some duplicate titles but I don't have any duplicate content. I'm not a web developer and not so expert but I have the impression that the crawler is following all my internal links (Infact I have also plenty of warnings saying "Too many on-page links". Do you think this is the cause of my errors? Should I implement the nofollow on all internal links? I'm working with Joomla. Thanks a lot for your help Marco
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marcodublin0 -
High number of items per page or low number with more category pages?
In SEO terms, what would be the best method: High number of items per page or low number with more pages? For example, this category listing here: http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/90/fsx-civil-aircraft/ It has 10 items per page. Would there be any benefit of changing a listing like that to 20 items in order to decrease the number of pages in the category? Also, what other ways could you increase the SEO of category listings like that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640