Best way to do site map for google

[astounded]

I am doing a site map to make sure google picks up all my pages at a new site. It is for search engine purposes only. I don't care how user friendly it is for visitors. The link to the site map will be near the top of the index page it will be easy for spiders to find.

From the standpoint of getting a high placement in Google, which is best for page [mysite.com...] Title: My Page 1

1.A straight link:
[mysite.com...]

2. A link where the .html file name is linked to:
page1.htm (is linked to [mysite.com...]

3. A link from the title of the page:
My Page 1 (linked to [mysite.com...]

Option 1 would be easiest, but is it equal to the other two options for high placement in Google?

[mortalfrog]

Well, my thinking is that if incoming link text is crucial to relevancy rankings, you want to take every opportunity to use your keyphrase with the incoming link. Since the keyphrase should be in the page title, linking with the title seems to me the way to go.

[deejay]

I'd definitely go for option 3.

If we treat keyword rich external links as so important, why pass up the opportunity to use them onsite?

Make sure to put a 'noindex, follow' on the page

[astounded]

My guess is that a noindex, follow is something that goes in robots.txt. Correct?

I already have a robots.txt file in the root directory that says:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Isn't this sufficient?

[deejay]

:) it is a robots tag, though in this case I was thinking in terms of a meta tag on the actual page:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,FOLLOW">

This tells the engine don't add this page to your index, but follow all the links from it.

Excellent info on it here:
[searchengineworld.com...]

The robots.txt file that you have there doesn't actually stop the spiders from going anywhere - you need to disallow specific pages or folders to stop them, eg:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /1001.html
Disallow: /1003.html

Much better explanation than I can give here:
[searchengineworld.com...]

There's a bunch of tools at the bottom of those pages as well.

[luma]

I would make the sitemap a definition list <dl>. The definition list term <dt> would be the a link to the page using the title as anchor text. The definition list definition <dd> would be the meta description.

Example. Assuming the following HTML page:

blue-widget.html
<title>blue widget</title>
<meta name="description" content="use blue widgets to solve all your problems. the best high quality blue widgets money can buy.">

create a sitemap.html and add <dt> and <dd> entries for your links (of course you would use some kind of perl or awk script or macro to dynamically create the sitemap).

sitemap.html

<title>widget sitemap</title>

<dl>
<dt><a href=blue-widget.html>blue widget</a></dt>
<dd>use blue widgets to solve all your xyz problems. The best high quality blue widgets money can buy.</dd>

<dt><a href=red-widget.html>red widget</a></dt>
<dd>Best red widgets in town. Use them to x, y, or even z.</dd>

...

</dl>

Don't add to many links to your site map (stay below 50). If you have more than 50 pages, create sub-category site maps.

Well, that's my suggestion. Feel free to criticize. :)

[Nick_W]

Nice idea Luma!

Would you believe that I've never used a definition list? Weird. I need to make a sitemap for a new project so I think I'll try your idea ;)

Nick

[pageoneresults]

> 3. A link from the title of the page:
My Page 1 (linked to [mysite.com...]

Definitely option #3. If space permits, I might even add a very short description right under it as luma suggests, very good idea.

[pageoneresults]

BTW, don't forget the <a title> attribute!

[stuntdubl]

I would really like to add a sitemap to a few of my sites, does anyone know a good program that will help with the process? I have dreamweaver and know that you can view the site heirarchy, but I'm not sure of anyway to convert it to an actual page. Any help is appreciated thanks.

-Opportunity...often it comes in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat. --(Napoleon Hill)

[quiet_man]

>>BTW, don't forget the <a title> attribute!

Is this just for usability, or does the title element help with rankings too?

[pageoneresults]

Usability of course! I've even gone as far as creating a css class <span class="help"> that shows a question mark ? instead of the default hand when hovering over certain links that contain help information.

[luma]

Talking about usability... check out Site Map Usability (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, January 6, 2002) [useit.com].