Visitor Site Maps

[nashville]

Are visitor site maps still good for visitors and search engines or just visitors?

Does anyone have an example of a well done visitor site map they could share?

Note that I am not talking about site maps just for search engines.

[inertia]

Visitor sitemaps are good for... visitors! They are also good for spiders as they allow them access to every page of your site, however we have xml sitemaps now so visitor sitemaps remain good for.... visitors!

[nashville]

And a well designed visitor site map would like what?

[inertia]

In general there isn't much in the design of a sitemap.

It's a list of links. Do one in html list format with indentations to indicate levels and structure. Make sure each link is visible and there you go!

There's loads of sitemaps out there, go and find some sites and look at them. Head to google and search for your keyword with "sitemap" after it. That will give you sitemap pages for sites in your industry

If I wanted to find you some examples that's all I'd do.

[lspence]

Inertia has pretty much covered it, but let me add a little bit more.

We know the big 3 search engines use sitemap.xml, and it's likely that other spiders do as well. There's always a possibility that some do not, so an html version would be good for them. As mentioned, html sitemaps are always good for your users. You might consider puting an abreviated sitemap on your custom 404 page.

As Inertia said, just make a list of all your links, and indent to indicate structure. You could put it in one long column, or you could make multiple columns, if there are a lot of links to display. I would add a blank line, or two, between each grouping for readability.

Using your website as an example, I just used the first 3 links from your nav bar, to get it started.

Pilot Journey - Home
-> Contact Us
-> Aviation Directory
-> Discovery Flight Store
-> AvCareers
-> Flight Instructions
-> Gift Certificates

Learn TO Fly!
-> Gift Certificate
-> Start Here
-> Glight Tips
-> Aviation Careers
-> Discovery Flight
-> Flight Schools
-> Flight Simulation
-> Helicopter Information

Flight Schools
-> Featured Schools
-> Helicopter Schools
-> Accelerated Schools
-> Colleges and Universities
-> Local Flight Schools