Site Map Issue

Is there a way to generate a site map with descriptions?

[gchapman]

Hello everyone.
I have inherited and currently manage SEVERAL 800-1000+ page sites and I am now faced with a bit of a problem. The sites have never had a site map. Doesn't seem like a big deal but it is and here is why. The gentleman who owns the sites hired [snip] to help with all of the Search Engine Optimization of the sites. [snip] is telling me that all of the sites now need a site map which again wouldn't usually be a problem. However, [snip] is saying that the site maps not only need a link to all of the pages on the site but a keyword rich description of the page for every link too. Which brings me to my question...

Does anyone know how to generate a site maps like this without spending countless hours manaually creating them? There are numerous software packages that build site maps but none of the ones I have found are capable of generating any kind of description.

Thank you for your help!

[edited by: pageoneresults at 8:15 pm (utc) on April 14, 2004]
[edit reason] Removed Specifics [/edit]

[rogerd]

Site mapping tools (Xenu is a free, if not spectacularly good, one) will generally pull the page title. If the title is keyword rich and relevant, that may be what you want. If you want the title for the link text and the meta description tag for the description (e.g., like some search engine results), you may have to hunt for a specialized tool or write your own.

[gchapman]

Thanks Roger! I appreciate the advice. I will have to give it a try! I have been looking everywhere for a tool that will do what he wants.

[Marcia]

There are different ways to do site maps. If the sites have 800-1000 pages that's far too many links to all be on one page. Here's what Google has to say about it

Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.

[google.com...]

Notice they're saying to make it for your users. Figuring the important parts and the hierarchy could easily be based on keyword factors, which is the way it should be. Put yourself in the surfers' shoes and figure what would be most helpful for them to find what they're looking for on the site - that'll serve both purposes, making the site intuitive to navigate and also having the right anchor text internally in the site. It'll also affect the distribution of the Page Rank through the site.

The SEO most likely has that figured out for the site already, so you might want to ask for recommendations on how to break it down.