Sitemap

[ikgrauke]

The spiders are only crawling 37 of my roughly 200 pages- site www.hallclosetuniforms.com. I don't know how to build a site map, so I am thinking I'll include some quicklinks to the all the various pages I have inside of making people work their way through the maze of pages that there currently is. If I added these links to the bottom of my homepage so that they would work like a sitemap, how would this be viewed by search engines? Helpful? Spammy? Please advise. Thanks!

[Duncan Pollock]

You may care to take a look at http://www.freefind.com/
I use it for my own website and find that many visitors seem to find it useful. In that I now have quite a number of pages, it helps them find a particular word/phrase I touch upon. It also builds a site map for me and enables me to periodically update it.
I ought to know what it's costing me (!), but I do know it isn't any large amount at all.

Duncan

[KeithO]

If you have 200 links in your footer, that will look spammy. To make a site map, just create a page and include all your links in that. Its that easy. Include a link to your site map in the footer instead of 200 links.

[ikgrauke]

I went back and looked at it yesterday and it is that easy. Please, just go, I'm too embarrased. How do you attached urls in your signature and have it say "School Uniforms" instead of www.hallclosetuniforms.com?

[mykiesee]

Here is what the html would look like:
School Uniforms (http://www.hallclosetuniforms.com)

[DrTandem1]

I would suggest building both one for your human visitors as well as one for Google and the other search engines.

For Google sitemap details, please visit:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login?sourceid=gsm&subid=us-et-about2

[Lori99]

Just look at your navigation and start pairing it down to various levels. Starting with:

Information
- About Us
- Policies
- Services

Boys Store
- Blazers
- Sweaters
- Knit Shirts
- etc.

Girls Store
- Blazers
- Sweaters
- Knits Shirts
- etc.

and so forth.

The site map that you have now looks a little choppy and can probably just be narrowed down into smaller categories.

[enesral]

Try this post by Greeneagle, I'm running it on my website right now! It's great!

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=52050

[spronger]

Duncan's suggestion on freefind.com is a good one. As an added bonus you will get a high PageRank page linking to every page on your site using your keyword-rich page titles.

But the only way to guarantee that Google spiders every page on your site regularly is to get a Google Sitemap. That's what they were designed for so take advantage of it. It's not that difficult. If you can use FTP you can do it. Here's a free sitemap creator I've been using, and I'm no tech genius:

http://enarion.net/google/phpsitemapng/

Give it a go. Once you've created your sitemap just submit it to Google and you'll never have to worry about your pages not being indexed. If you need help drop me a line.

Steve

[StephenR.]

I'm lazy and picked up a copy of a killer sitemap generator for a mere $15. There are free ones available but this is the easiest one to use and offers all (if not more) of the same features. Plus it can be run on a CRON job which helps out quite a bit. I'm not affiliated with this product whatsoever, it's just what I use across all of my sites and highly recommend.

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

[Webnauts]

You might would like to try this online tool
http://www.searchenginepromotionhelp.com/m/spider-map/creator.php (I though hope that you have good titles) or this freeware desktop site map generator http://www.dirfile.com/exactmapper_lite.htm

[gleearch]

You can try using this.
http://www.blocklayer.com/googlesitemap/
It's free and generates your google compliant sitemap for you. You probably will have to do some manual editing but at least it gets you started. Then sign up at google sitemaps and upload it.

[thesteelsource]

But the only way to guarantee that Google spiders every page on your site regularly is to get a Google Sitemap. That's what they were designed for so take advantage of it. It's not that difficult. If you can use FTP you can do it. Here's a free sitemap creator I've been using, and I'm no tech genius:

http://enarion.net/google/phpsitemapng/

Steve

I'm trying this right now and it seems very easy. I'm just waiting for my website host to set the permissions on the files, then I think I'll be ready to rock and roll. If I can do it, anybody can.

Norma

[groov'in]

Google Site Mapper from www.coffeecup.com - well worth taking a look at their free trial.

Steve
http://www.groovy-girl.co.uk

[incrediblehelp]

Yet another easy Google SiteMap creator:

http://johannesmueller.com/gs/

[DrTandem1]

Let's not forget the human visitors. After all, just because a search engine can find your pages doesn't mean the average visitor will be able to do so.

There are many forms a sitemap for the human visitor can take on many different forms. Probably one of the easiest is modeling it after a mall directory much like Lori99 posted earlier. Some people prefer a graphical approach.

No matter what configuration you choose, it should be as simple as possible. Visitors will go to a sitemap usually after being frustrated by not being able to find what they want from the main links on a site. If they find your sitemap more of a puzzle, they will most likely become more frustrated and leave.

[addscript]

Try phpsitemapng. Its eash to install and automatic sitemap creation.

http://enarion.net/google/phpsitemapng/