Site Map on the Home Page

Is this useful?

[Williamsburg]

Hello...

We are going thru a minor homepage redesign... Some of our competitors essentially put a site map on their home page. I'm sure you've seen this before... Generally below the fold, a categorized list of links to internal pages.

Is this helpful from an SEO perspective? Or, does it dilute link equity to every page? Is it spammy?

From a navigational perspective, it could be useful for a user... But, I'm not convinced.

Any thoughts?

[pleeker]

I would think they do that because the home page has the highest PR and they think they can pass more PR to sub-pages this way.

Seems kinda pointless to me since PR is so overrated in general. I'd much prefer to see a good, traditional menu that's user-friendly and SE-friendly. Site maps are a good idea, but on their own, not on the home page.

[Warren]

What about your users? Having the site map as a link on each page as part of your standard navigation is much more user friendly.

I would have to question who your competitors are designing their sites for - SEs or their users?

[golles]

depends on the number of pages. if it looks ok to the visitor without disturbing the design of the page then it will do no harm.

I generally have a link off the homepage though to site maps

[simonuk]

I'd be wary of adding dozens and dozens of links on the home page. I've seen others do the same with no real improvement on the SE's.

SE's do check site map pages often and I've always had all my pages found quickly my having a normal site map.

[justgowithit]

Seems kinda pointless to me since PR is so overrated in general.

Care to elaborate on this. From what I’ve heard EVERYTHING is about PR and links? What do you know that I don’t?

[CygnusX1]

I'd like to put in my two cents worth. I have a site map on most of the websites that I do SEO work for. I make sure the site map is at the bottom of the page on just the home page. I don't do this for "PR" value, and I don't do this to get visitors to the site map page.

I personaly don't care if a visitor finds the site map, but if they do and it helps them, then great.

My main reason is to make sure that the search engines find it. This is the fastest way I know of to get all the pages on your website crawed by a search engine spider.

I think a site map is a very good way to help promote all of the webpages in your website.

[Jimmy Turnip]

I would think they do that because the home page has the highest PR and they think they can pass more PR to sub-pages this way.

It's true, a site map on the home page would divide it's page rank between all the outbound pages it links too.

[edited by: pageoneresults at 2:03 pm (utc) on Sep. 16, 2004]
[edit reason] Removed URI Reference - Please Refer to TOS [/edit]

[Williamsburg]

Thanks for all the discussion...let me pull together all various points on homepage sitemap:

1. From a users point of view:
- Depending on design: could be helpful or not
- Many users expect a separate Site Map page, so it could be overkill

2. From and SEO point of view:
- Could helps SEs find internal pages
- Dilutes PR
- May be pointless if you have a sitemap

Let me know if I missed anything...thanks for your posts