Do you have an onsite site map for a deeper crawl?

[F_Rose]

We currently have a site map on our site.

I was wondering if thier is more I can do for Google Bots to index our site in full with a deeper crawl..

Any suggestion would be very helpful..

Thank you..

[F_Rose]

Is it important for the sitemap to be linked from the home page as the first link? Will it help in any way?

We have paragraph content towards the top of the page.. Is it OK to put the link somewhere in the content?

[jdMorgan]

Site maps are very useful, in that you can use them to 'equalize' the PR of the pages of your site, regardless of their URL click-depth. Linking to the site map in addition to linking to the home page from all or most other pages helps both spiderability and site useability.

First link? I wouldn't bother with designing my sites to suit spiders if it requires that level of modification.

Jim

[F_Rose]

jdMorgan,

Thank you..Our site map is in the footer, which is very possible that the spiders are not actually even getting to it..

Is that OK?

[texasville]

I've had mine in the main menus on all sites except one. It hasn't made a difference. Currently, I have a site launched 4 months ago. Google indexed it then dropped most of it. I submitted a google sitemap 2 weeks ago and (fingers crossed) it is completely indexed. Now..lol...this is only a 12 page site about an annual event.

[F_Rose]

What type of site maps have you tried, and have been successful in Google getting to deep crawl your site?

[Komodo_Tale]

Site maps play an important role in assisting all spiders, not just Google to locate your content and can be beneficial for many different reasons. Here are only two:
[list]

If you have deep content, four or more layers, a site map can create shallower paths. Content reached by shallow paths, only one or two clicks from the home page, will be spidered more completely more frequently.

If you have a web site that uses session identifications in the URLs, for example a shopping cart, and you do not want to use Mod Rewrite, a sitemap can lead spiders to each static address, or on the shopping cart to each product, in a manner that is easily index able. This will maximize your spider able content.
[/list]
Because of the behavior of search spiders, each site map should have no more than 100 links on it. Should you need additional sitemaps, cross-linking each site map to one another can be helpful.

Of course, should your web site contain thousands of pages you may need one or more site maps just to index all of your site maps. If this is the case, place links to ten different site maps on every site map page that links to actual content. This will help to increase the spider ability of all of your sitemaps and give them any benefits derived by additional internal links.

Do use Google Site Maps. If you can easily create XML maps with all their extra information then you should do so. Otherwise, a simple text file listing each web page can be easy to produce and effective.