Should our social network put all of our member profiles in the site map?
-
We're working on some changes to our site and want to add a site map file to give some hints to search engines on our member profiles. Our site has millions of member profiles. I want to ensure that Google indexes them.
Is there a benefit to submitting millions of profiles across multiple site maps?
Is it better to pick a sample of those and submit them? Most member profiles have links to other member profiles.
Is there any benefit to taking a single site map of 50k links and then changing it at some frequency so that all of the member profiles are eventually indexed?
Thanks.
-
This was the approach we were considering. However, what gave me pause was looking at other social networks are doing.
- LinkedIn only has 50k profiles.
- Meez has multiple index files and looks like they are indexing many of their profiles
- Facebook and MySpace don't appear to use Sitemaps (although they do have a crawlable member directory)
- WeeWorld has 500 links
The point is there doesn't seem to be any consistency.
If we end up creating a human readable directory ala Facebook does that achieve the same thing?
-
Totally agree with mike and john.
-
I would definitely do this. Since you have so many profiles, you'll want to have one main sitemaps linking to smaller sitemaps with the profile URLs. One of the sites I work on has several million activities created by users that we put into sitemaps. We automatically generate our sitemaps files frequently and add the new activities created. We include a last modified date for each activity as well so the search bot will know if anything has changed since the last time it's indexed it.
I would create a sitemap system where all of your profiles could be found, and by including the last modified date, you can leave it up to the searchbot as to whether or not a profile has been updated and needs to be re-indexed. There are a couple other properties you could use listed on http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php as well.
-
Yes, we have the concept of public / private profiles. Private profiles aren't included in the index.
-
Benefiting or not, make sure users have the ability to turn this off to avoid privacy problems.
It might create a mess though if they link back and forth.
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
-
Blogger.com with an RSS Feed or on-site blog?
I have a client who uses blogger.com as their blogging platform, however this isn't helping to build the depth of their domain. They like to use this because it is easier for them than to create a blog post in their wordpress website. I am wondering if adding a feed to their site on a dedicated blog page would help SEO at all or would it be best to teach them how to use the wordpress CMS to blog? I was thinking that by adding the feed since it is their original content that it might have a similar effect. I know this is probably simple but I want to see what the moz community says. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | ReputationCrew0 -
New jobboard: Can redirecting folder (site.com/jobboard) to subdomain (jobboard.site.com) hurt SEO?
Hi there, I'm planning to implement a jobboard on my website which needs to be installed on a subdomain (jobboard.site.com) but I'd really like to use site.com/jobboard for promoting this jobboard (jobboard collects external industry jobs). Are there any possible disadvantages when I set up a 301 redirect from jobboard.site.com to site.com/jobboard? Also: What if I want to move this jobboard to a unique domain one day (e.g. jobboard-industry-xy.com), Would that be tricky (as I'd basically have to redirect the folder-to-subdomain redirect to an external domain and therefore get a folder-to-subdomain-to-external-domain redirect...)? Cheers, Thomas
On-Page Optimization | | stl990 -
Site structure question
I'm currently working on a very awkward custom-WP setup, in which I can't maintain the present drop-down navigation menu without having those pages under a parent or without completely recoding everything. I have two requirements, for SEO purposes I'm looking for the following structure for each targeted landing page: www.example.com/landing-page as opposed to www.example.com/sub/landing-page Of course, having my landing pages as a child, I get the latter of the two. For navigational purposes they need to fall under a specific category in a drop-down menu. With any other theme or setup this is an easy fix, but not here. What I have now is that the landing pages are currently placed under a parent category page. But, they have custom permalinks. The permalinks are setup as follows www.example.com/landing-page But, technically the exact structure is still www.example.com/sub/landing-page which then redirects to the custom permalink. So, my question is - in an attempt to get my most important landing pages close to the root for better PR and crawlability, do I still get the same benefit with my current setup? Is this structure I have, better, worse, or indifferent? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | JayAdams320 -
If you were working on a wine site would you include the wine year in the URL?
I've come across a case where I'm asking myself what the best direction would be to go and while there is no right direction I would like to here some feedback from others. I'm working with some great content pages all about wine. As you probably know the difference between a 07 wine and a 95 is vastly different and up to this point I'm using the full year in the url much like this: grapesinyourtoesexample.com/2007-cellar-pod-viognier-adelaide-hills/. What I'm worried about is my use of the year in the URL. I feel it's very important for it to be used in the page title and on page but I'm concerned that it might be setting me back with my use of it in the url. My concern is that search engines might be interpretting it as a datestamp rather than as a informational piece of data describing the asset. Looking at my competitors, my content is one of the only sites using the year and in most searches for various wines my content is in the second half of the SERPs. If you were creating this content would you use the year? If you were working with current content would you drop the year across all of the site and implement to necessary redirects? Just to be clear this is a client related project so my use of "my site|my content" refers to the client's content.
On-Page Optimization | | DotCar0 -
Seasonal site structure
Bit of a complicated one for anyone who likes a challenge.. We sell a range of products which are very seasonal, so therefore have a seasonal section within the store with the products categorized into their relevant categories. In additon to this i wanted to also create a feature of each season so in effect pull forward on to a new tab the relevant season ie: Valentine so that customers didn't have to hunt for the products by going via seasonal shop etc The problem is that my site urls display last-category/product-title so in effect as the seasons change these urls will be deleted. They do remain elsewhere in our catalogue.. Does this make sense?
On-Page Optimization | | LadyApollo0 -
Anchor Texts on Internal Links on my Site Question
[Hey folks, Anchor text question for internal links on my site. We all know that proper anchor text is important for rankings, both in links pointing to your site and links on your site. Google webmaster tools is showing my top internal anchor text links to be letters. This is because of navigation on the site which is in a global footer on hundreds of thousands of pages. Do you think that this dilutes or minimizes the relevance of the real anchor texts that we are targeting which trail behind these, or if this went away it would have no effect on the rest of the anchor texts on the site. How would you handle this, we can just get rid of this navigation because it's passing PR and helping the pages get spidered. Thanks in advance. Anchor text 1. g 2. q 3. d 4. v 5. k 6. t 7. o 8. u 9. a 10. p 11. m 12. r 13. e 14. x 15. y 16. l 17. i 18. z 19. c 20. j 21. s 22. b 23. f 24. h 25. w 26. n](mailto:acaldarea@hotmail.com)
On-Page Optimization | | irvingw0 -
Site-wide keyword density
A colleague of mine was saying that he has been able to get top ranking for a high traffic term by using variations of that head term on multiple pages that are associated with the main page. For example,he would optimize a landing page for the high traffic word "Construction." He would then build pages under this landing page that are optimized for variations of this word: "Construction facts," "Industrial Construction Companies," "Construction Resource Allocator" etc. His theory is that the subpages add credibility with spiders that the root page is the best for that root page. This doesn't seem like it would work, but I'm curious as to what other people think.
On-Page Optimization | | EricVallee340 -
Is Google Places appropriate for an ecommerce site and blogs
I'm working with a client that has an ecommerce site. He has e physical addresses where they work, however, neither would want customers to go to their office. Is it inappropriate to create a Google Places listing in this situation? I'm working with another client who runs a blog for his PR agency. Is it OK to create a Google Places listing for a blog? He would welcome people to visit his agency.
On-Page Optimization | | EricVallee340