Sitemaps On The Homepage, Spammy or Useful Options

[Williamsburg]

Hello...

We are going thru a minor homepage redesign... Some of our competitors essentially put a site map on their home page. I'm sure you've seen this before... Generally below the fold, a categorized list of links to internal pages.

Is this helpful from an SEO perspective? Or, does it dilute link equity to every page? Is it spammy?

From a navigational perspective, it could be useful for a user... But, I'm not convinced.

Any thoughts?

[Jill]

I find them pretty messy myself.

I'd rather see a nice categorized dhtml navigation menu. Then you can put the same links into a noscript tag, and it's a lot cleaner and neater for your users.

[BrianR]

Jill - could you point us to an example of this type of site map that you particularly like?

Thanks,
BrianR

[Jill]

Sure Brian, just go to any page of my site (besides the forum!).

I'm talking about the menu at the top where you mouse over the various options to dig deeper.

It's not a site map, it's navigation (which is all a sitemap is if you put it at the bottom of your home page!).

[BrianR]

Ah! - NOW I understand! Thanks Jill.

BrianR

[DanThies]

Lots of sites have what amounts to a site map on the home page. As long as it's well organized, it can be quite good for usability. I think we link to almost half the site from our home page at SEORL.

[artifact]

Can't resist this one, a chance to rant on a different subj.

I finally found the energy and time to do a site map. Every website page has a link to the site map, another user-friendly feature if you get lost or confused. The map has, on one page, an overview of all art work and other content of the website, all of which is one click away.

I agree that the navigation can be said to be a site map, but I think the brief narrative added to my site map is especially useful to my foreign visitors (from over 150 countries). I've tried to write it as simply as possible.

Another advantage of the site map is it provides yet another page to optimize for the search engines -- a great place to include some old keywords and add some new ones.

The site map was uploaded to the server and has been promoted on the homepage since July 22. In looking at the site stats, a search for --art work site map-- showed that the site map page ranked No. 1 at Google. (A flash in the pan?)

I don't know that anyone will particularly like my idea of a site map, but I had a great time pulling it all together on one page. It's not intended to have a professional appearance, else it would detract from the rest of the website!

[Jill]

Artifact, I completely agree that most sites can benefit from a good sitemap page.

It's putting an entire map of your site at the bottom of your home page that I question as a good usability technique for some sites. All depends on how many links we're talking and how you do it.

I would personally only put top-level pages in links at the bottom of my site, as many more than that would be pretty cluttered.

Say like if I wanted to link to every article I wrote, or every newsletter. Those would belong on a sitemap (and on the top-level articles page), not the bottom of my home page, imo.

[nuttakorn]

Jill,

"Sitemap with a brief content VS Site map just only text link"

What do you think about generate those site map page? What's google think to the page has only text link without full paragraph of text. I seen keyword value in paragraph is more than stand-alone keyword.

Is it good for putting a paragraph for each page on site map or site map just for link only.

[linux_lover]

Your menu isnt read by screenreaders Jill. I am currently working on a dropdown menu that will...

[Jill]

LL, isn't the noscript tag that I have there read by the screen readers?

[Jill]

Is it good for putting a paragraph for each page on site map or site map just for link only.

Well, when I see just a page of links and nothing else, I find it to be not very helpful.

[linux_lover]

LL, isn't the noscript tag that I have there read by the screen readers?

Hmmm you'd think it would be wouldnt you. I tested it with Jaws and the menu wasnt read out...

I might have to look into that.

>> added

From testing with the following code:

CODE

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
document.writeln ("<div class='message'>Scripting is enabled by the user agent.</div>");
</script>
<noscript>
<div class="message">Scripting is disabled by the user agent. This is conditional content.</div>
</noscript>

Screenreaders tested do not read out the noscript content. Tested with Microsoft Narrator / jaws / suprnova

I have a theory that a menu created with divs/css/javascript should work as all the text would be in the page and be either hidden or shown via a javascript onMouseOver event.

Thats now on my list of stuff to make when I have a minute (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

This post has been edited by linux_lover: Sep 15 2004, 10:27 AM

[linux_lover]

According to the w3c:

* ALT for IMG: JAWS reads ALT when viewing image
* TITLE for IMG element: JAWS will speak title if no ALT text
* LONGDESC for IMG element: not supported
* content of OBJECT element: Some information from objects is available
* ALT for AREA element: JAWS reads ALT when viewing image
* ALT for INPUT element: JAWS reads ALT when viewing image
* ACRONYM element: not supported
* TITLE for MAP: not supported
* ABBR element: not implemented
* SUMMARY for TABLE: not implemented
* TITLE for FRAME: JAWS can read title
* LONGDESC for FRAME: not implemented
* NOFRAME for FRAME: not implemented
* NOSCRIPT for SCRIPT: not supported

So I guess it isnt in Jaws, dunno about other screen readers but since jaws is one of the best.....

[omahonydonnelly]

What about PR?

In most cases if homepage is PR 5, next level pages are PR4, next level PR3, etc.

In this example, if all pages are linked from the homepage, are they more likely to be PR4?

I've been trying different things on different sites to check this out, but as the Google Toolbar is "broken" I don't have a clear answer, though more of the lower level pages are getting spidered when linked from the homepage.

I always have a site map linked from all pages, but having links directly from homepage (and at the foot of all pages) seems to help more.

Does it matter if the link to the site map is closer to the top of the code? On most sites it appears toward the bottom of the page, could the spider move on before getting to that link? I haven't tried putting it more to the top.

Also, any ideas on text for the Site Map link, other than "Site Map"?