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SiteMaps and HyperLinks: Keys to Attract Search Engine Robots by www.itsallaboutlinks.com
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Search engine robots or oftenly called searchbots are not
terribly sophisticated. They cannot perform action such as
button click, form submission or any other action that any human
visitor might perform. Searchbots are able to index the page
content and click through hyperlinks on the web page. For this
reason, adding navigational text links to your web pages
provides the search engine robots with another means to click
through the links of your web pages when it cannot access these
other types of navigation.
No matter how great your JavaScript menu system is, afterall its
just a script that any searchbots can't use. Search Engine
Robots can only follow plain hyperlinks. Since the ability to
move around on your site is vital to the searchbots for
successful indexing of your website content, you want to make it
as easy as possible for them to visit all of your pages. Use of
text links at the bottom of your pages, while hardly cutting
edge, is one of the best ways to make sure that the search
engine robots can move around your site. Be sure to include
links to your site's principal pages on all the pages in your
site. Always remember to put a link to your sitemap page here
too.
Site Maps
A sitemap is a optimized and effective version of your
navigation links for searchbots. A sitemap will have links to
all of the major pages on your site. You may list all your links
in the sitemap for the best performance. This means that once
the robot gets to the sitemap page, it can visit every page on
your entire website with minimal effort. Having all of the
content of your site included in the search engine database is a
good idea to improve your search engine ranking and your website
page rank.
Now next question one can ask is, What a good sitemap contains?
Answer is simple. Sitemap should provide following information:
1. Provide text links to at least the most important pages on
your site; depending on the size of the site, it may have links
to every page. 2. Give a short explanation of each page on your
site, to inform your visitors about your website. 3. Give your
visitors the information they need when lost in your website,
and show them how to reach the page they are looking for. 4.
Provide a pathway for the search engine robots to follow in
order to reach your most important pages. 5. Provide important
keyword phrases in the sitemap text and hypertext links that
help the automated search engine robot understand what the page
is about. 6. Help search engine robots find static landing pages
that then link to dynamically generated pages they may not
otherwise find.
Even if your website is small, adding a sitemap for your
visitors and for the search engine robots (search bots) is
highly recommended and should be part of your website
optimization.
To make your sitemap most attractive to the search engine robots
and your human visitors, be sure to include descriptive text
along with the page URLs and links. Use your keywords in that
text, including appropriate content for each of the pages to
which you link. Be careful not to overuse your keyword phrases,
though, or you may be penalized in the rankings. Remember that
this is a map that will be used by both search engine robots and
your human visitors. If the content of the page makes sense to
the people who visit your site, chances are it will make sense
to the visiting robots as well.
When you make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site,
they will find what they are looking for. When you make it easy
to search engine robots to move around on your site, you
increase your chances of being favorably listed in their search
results.
About the author:
Paras Shah
Webmaster & SEO Expert
http://www.itsallaboutlink
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