I don't recommend using an "old fashioned" sitemap if you've
got more than 20 pages on your site. The sitemap page, if you
must have one, should be created for the user, not the search
engines. Don't expect them to help your rankings.
If you've got thousands or even a few hundred pages on your
site, then I would use a sitemap at all. If the users come
across your sitemap "pages" they'll be confused and frustrated--and
won't be able to find what they're looking for if they have
to look at a huge list of links.
Pages with tons of outgoing links on the page are pretty
much worthless when it comes to rankings because PageRank
isn't passed (or if it is, not much is passed), and there
isn't much link credit being passed. So, for ranking purposes,
don't count on a sitemap helping you out.
It's much much better to rely on a breadcrumb trail type
of navigation throughout your site. Break your site up into
categories and make your main page link to your category
pages--then your category pages should link to your other
pages. PageRank and link credit will be passed, and if you
keep your links categorized it will help with things like
Google LocalRank.
It's better to have more incoming links to a page than outgoing
links on that page. So, if you have 10 outgoing links on
a page then there should be more than 10 incoming links to
that page. A sitemap page with a lot of links on it will
be pretty much useless if there's too many outgoing links
on that page (by outgoing links I mean any link to another
page, internal or otherwise).
Sitemaps and XML files, mainly made for the Google Sitemaps
program are pretty much useless for ranking purposes. Sure,
you will give Google a list of URLs to include in their index.
And Google will crawl those pages. But if you only give the
URL to Google and don't rely on PageRank being passed properly
throughout your site via the internal linking structure then
your pages won't rank well in the search engines. Don't expect
to give Google a URL to crawl and expect it to rank anywhere
for anything if you don't have everything else in place (like
on-topic links to the URL). So, why waste your time creating
a sitemap/XML file if you can get the pages crawled normally
without a sitemap? They'll have a much better chance to get
good rankings if you don't rely on a sitemap/XML file.
Huge sites like Amazon traditionally don't have huge sitemap
pages--they have links to their pages from other internal
pages on their site. Personally, I don't like to rely on
sitemap pages or XML feeds to get sites crawled--there are
other ways to get pages crawled and they might even rank
well.
Bill Hartzer manages the Search Engine Marketing division
of MarketNet,
Inc., a leading full-service interactive design and development
firm in Dallas, Texas.
Hartzer has infused MarketNet with his enthusiasm and vision
for search marketing. Bill Hartzer is focused on developing
results-oriented paid and
organic
search marketing programs to help clients increase visibility,
broaden reach and maximize their return on investment.
