adding html to site map

[Cate]

I want to edit the html on my site map to make the page more search engine friendly

I have not touched it to date for fear of harming the site

Is it ok to add the usual html stuff such as 'keywords', 'description' &
'index, follow' etc

Any feedback much appreciated

http://www.buy-clearblue.co.uk/acatalog/sitemap.html

[jont]

The site map is formed from the main Act_Primary.html and does not allow for direct adding of page title, keywords etc as per the usual sections and brochure pages. I recall some previous v7 posts about optimising the page for the site map and would be worth digging out.

I would not get too bogged down with this as the site map serves it's function (very well) to assist the search engine spiders navigate your website... from an SEO point of view there is very little text on there (as such) to assist with SEO to any great extent.

[Cate]

Thank you John-really appreciate the reply

Unfortunately I have just added some so looks like I will need to take it off.

Problem I have been having is that although some of my pages get listed by Google some of them do not seem to get crawled at all unless I work my way through and manually submit each one which is very time consuming

I had always understood that you only need to submit the home page and that the spiders will crawl the whole site but this does not seem to be the case with our Actinic stores-do you have any idea why ?


Kate

[jont]

The simplest solution would be to place a static link to the sitemap from the bottom of all your pages (Act_Primary.html and Act_BrochurePrimary.html) as this will provide a link from all your pages (including the homepage) to your sitemap.

You should only submit the homepage and only once... if you keep resubmitting you may get penalised for spamming.. I would stop doing this immediately as it is not helping the cause.

[Cate]

Oh dear!

Thing is what do you do when your pages completely drop out of Google

I recently found some older sites of ours had completley disappeared from Google as I had not checked them for 6 months or so (been distracted wth another project)

So I updated them and resubmitted them about 2 weeks ago and many of them have reappeared in google and have got 1st page placement on some search terms.

Would you advise I would have been better to just update them and then let Google find them or was it reasonable to resubmit them in this case.

Kate

[jont]

If you have resubmitted then it is too late .. the bell has been struck. If the site had fallen off the face of planet Google then resubmitting is probably fine .. as you say they have been indexed again so they have been accepted.. what they don't like is continuous submitting of the sites over and over (this was a common ploy by SEO companies a few years back).

Now you are listed it is a case of usual SEO work ... adding the site map link will be a big benefit but updating and maintaining the site is essential to keep it listed.. if Google thinks it is static and died it will start to drop down the listings again. Adding and tweaking little and often is the best policy.. this is why blogs are so useful to keep content fresh and changing.

[Cate]

Hi John,

thank you for your advice-sorry to be so dim.

I would like to add the link to site map as you suggested but am unsure how to add it.

I did not realise the site map was so important until today
Very few of our pages seem to link to it which may explain why so few pages have been indexed.

I have tended to place most of internal links to home page or to products.
Would I be better changing these to site map or is there a better way of adding it.

I am not sure what I do with the html code you posted
Please advise where I place it

kate

[pinbrook]

Remember there are 2 sitemaps...

one is the sitemap.html generated by actinic, the common consensus for this is to ensure you have a link to it from your index page

BUT in my opinion most importantly there is the xml sitemap that you should additionally produce and upload separately to your webspace then tell google, yahoo and MSN it is there.

Google, MSN, Yahoo will then spider your site using this directive and xml.

do a www search on "google webmaster", yahoo webmaster, msn webmaster to find out how to do this.

If you have an xml file then the actinic generated one becomes somewhat redundant

[Cate]

I have done as you suggested and added link to site map on the index page.

I will see if that makes a difference.

I trailed back through some older posts on the same issue and the google site maps seemed fairly contoversial so will probably give this a miss for now.

Kate

[pinbrook]

google site maps seemed fairly contoversial

what have you read that makes you think it is detrimental to have an XML sitemap for google?

[leehack]

I concur, it's highly recommended apart from in the first 6 months of a new site launch IMO.

[jont]

They are fine so long as again you do not try and spam them.

[Cate]

I did a search on site maps & read a thread about google site maps on here in which a guy added one and his site fell out of Google. He took it down and he was re-indexed.The general consensus on the thread was that it was controversial. I hope I have not got the wrong end of the stick.

I am fairly new to this and am willing to take advice on this.

I did not realise the importance of the actinic site map until yesterday !

The site in question is fairly new but many of our older actinic sites have same problem with many pages not getting indexed by google, and so I wondered if they were even getting crawled.

Kate

[pinbrook]

My advise to to use it.

the fundamental difference in actinicsite map is google has to find your site first then spider it.

By using xml sitemap (use the same one for google, yahoo and MSN) you ask the big 3 to comes visit you.

as jont says do this within their guidelines though

[leehack]

And reference it within your robots.txt for good measure.