Reciprocal Links Pages and Site Map

[amythepoet]

I have six pages of reciprocal links pages on my site.

I was thinking I need to a special site map for them, or have one main links page that would lead to other categories of the links page.

I've read a lot about Site Maps being a vital part of any SEO strategy, but
don't quite understand why. I use straightforward keyword-rich text links
for my links page. and all of my pages have been found and indexed by
Google. How would having a Site Map help with my rankings? Would it help at
all?

[ogletree]

It is a good way to hand google a list of url's. An html sitemap that is linked to by every page on your site can help spread your link value around. I really see no real use for a xml sitemap other than the fact that Google has a place for me to send them one. I just saw that webmastercentral is starting to show more detail on what it thinks is wrong with your sitemap.

[ashish21cool]

Hi,

Sitemap is helpful in terms of getting the links indexed by the G engine. Its not needed or neither an asset for getting ranks.
There are many sites with thousands of URL's, in such a case many a times it haapens that search engines dont index all the pages of the site. So, in such a situation, sitemap becomes fruitful to search engines for providing them all the links pages.

I hope it makes sense.

Cheerzzzzzzzz

[dzinepankaj]

Its nice to use keyword-rich text links for the links page, but its the old algorithm which was outdated by google at the time of florida update.
We are using the sitemap only for the purpose of crawling our website properly. Its not that much effective in terms of Rank or PR.
Thanks
Pankaj

[Rienne]

I had a sitemap which was "broken" by the programmers when they added a layer of content (on a dynamic site) so it wasn't getting all the pages on the site. Google would not index. They then fixed the bug , and voila within days I had lots of entries indexed!

[amythepoet]

Thanks everybody. Ill do it
One thing now, I already have a site map , but I take it from what you are saying that I need a second one, just for the 6 pages of links that I have, correct?

A.

[ogletree]

You could just add it to the bottom of the front page or somewhere on the front page. You don't need an extra sitemap page.

[WeaselyOne]

It sounds like you're worried about getting your reciprocal links/pages noticed by search engines. Your reciprocal links pages are not going to help with SEO and that many recip links are probably going to get "de-emphasized" by search engines within their algorithm anyway. If the majority of your links are recip I would work on getting some good one way links rather than thinking about the site map.

Of course, I should be working on some good one way links too instead of posting - hehe.

[ogletree]

You know I never noticed he was talking about recip. Your right get rid of those.

[callivert]

"sitemap" has more than one meaning.
There's often a page on your website called "sitemap.html" (or sitemap.php or whatever) which is useful for visitors to find all your pages.
Then there is "sitemap.xml" which is for google. You'd only need this if you're using google webmaster tools.
It sits in the root directory and helps google crawl your site. And normally, you'd list every single page on your site. I think there's nothing to be gained from omitting your links pages.
Yahoo also likes a sitemap, but in a different format again.
As for reciprocals, I wouldn't sweat them too much. We recently had this thread [webmasterworld.com] on the topic.