Merging low level sitemaps to home page with 301

Will it hurt the home page?

[Vadim]

Hello, it seems that to return the dropped page to index it is useful to have sitemaps directly on the home page.
[webmasterworld.com...]

I have few second level sitemaps (contents) and would like to transfer them to the home page.

If I do 301 redirect from this second level sitemaps to the sections in the home page with the anchor (something like …home#sitemap2) will it hurt the home page?

Could you share the experience, what happens when a page is 301 redirected to the section of other page?

Vadim.

[tedster]

Google doesn't index in-page fragments (identified with a #) separately. And anything you add to your Home Page will affect how it is indexed.

Adding an extra bunch of sitemap links to the Home Page is, in my opinion, a poor idea. For one thing, that will spread all your PR over many pages and make the site look like every page is equally important. Using one link that goes from the home page to a sitemap page is a better approach.

[Vadim]

Using one link that goes from the home page to a sitemap page is a better approach.

I tried it about two years ago. In my case the result was so bad that I quickly deleted the sitemap page and decided never to use it again. The reason probably was that I had (and have now) the links from the home page to three contents of the site sections, that actually plays the role of the three section sitemaps. Therefore, adding the joint global sitemap probably turned on the duplicate filter or similar.

So it was actually another reason of my question. If I have three section sitemaps, how may I add the joint common sitemap not loosing CERP and PR of the existing pages?

You are probably right that it is better and safer just to add few important links to the home page and let less important pages to drop from the Google index until they have their own inbound links or become old enough.

Thanks,

Vadim.