Site Maps and What To Link To

Every Page or Every Section?

[Oaf357]

Site maps are in general a good idea. But how in-depth should they be?

Should they link to every page on the site or should they link to major sections and major pages on the site?

[Mohamed_E]

Obviously depends on the size of your site.

For search engines the main advantage of a site map is to give a short path to every page. If on the main page of each section you have direct links to every page of that section, a site map that only points to sections is probably OK.

Note that the Google guidelines [google.com...] say:

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.

This is a special case of a more general guideline given on the same page:

Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

[Oaf357]

Very helpful. Thanks.