By: Sergei Kachenkov | July 02, 2008
This posting is for XML Site Map benefits in regard of SEO (practically as SEO tool). In this article I'm using one of our client's site, fillmore.com as reference points.
In overall, technology is evolving, web site structures changing rapidly from static to dynamic environments. Site maps now days are practically SEO tool to help search engines robots follow links thought the site.
1) For example on current fillmore.com - question: how can search engine follow links:
from: http://www.fillmore.com/
to: http://www.fillmore.com/search/1-3-family_homes_brooklyn_ny
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Answer: easy, no problem, because there is direct link between these (or other) pages.
2) OK, let make it harder, look at a steps between these pages:
a) from: http://www.fillmore.com/search/1-3-family_homes_brooklyn_ny
b) to sub-step: selected Bronx
c) (another sub-selection, optional - neighborhoods)
d) to:
Search Results - Click to View
e) Listing Details pages - too many to display
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In this # 2 example from live pages, it is virtually impossible for search engine to crawl from a) to d) and multiple e)-s, because there are no direct links. This navigation structure consist out of form elements (checkboxes, drop-menus, search-submit buttons) and search engines not be able to follow this. As result, those dynamic pages not get indexed or indexed very poorly.
That is where Dynamic Site Map in XML format comes to the rescue. This XML sitemap will tells search engines about site structure and how to follow those dynamic steps. Per research, the sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.
Part 3) It is even more advance to set up an automatic re-generation of XML sitemap and submit it to Google's account daily. Almost like a datafeed, only in this case it is not a datafeed, it is XML Site Map feed to Google.
What's the benefits to do an automatic daily submission? It is obvious, listings on fillmore.com pages change daily, so an automatic sitemap submission will deliver to Google new daily updates about site structure.
Separately, there is site map for Yahoo. According to documentation, Yahoo uses .txt based sitemap, but the rest of procedures are similar to Google.
I'm greatly encourage you to consider this as it is in essence SEO work. Different kind of SEO, the use of technology.
Any questions, discussions - welcome at 718-336-4573 |
