Article Idea:
Do we need sitemaps?
suggested by Rohan Sandeep on 2006/07/06
Sitemaps have reached a new stage of redundancy. If we study user site usage patterns we might be surprised that the sitemap’s are least patronized. Usability experts claim sitemaps are not needed if the site is usable enough.
Some experts still stand behind the concept, introducing them in projects with different look and feel and structures.
• Maybe sitemaps links should be more visual
• Sitemaps should be clubbed with other help mechanisms. Speaking the same language and helping users out in an ambient manner
• Maybe sitemaps are great but the term used to address them needs to change.
• Maybe sitemaps should not be there in lots of sites
• Maybe sitemaps should be re-invented to be as simple and as accessible as real maps
Your thoughts!
Want to see this idea turned into a story?
2 people said yes. | 0 people said no.
Christina Wodtke
540 Reputation points
Posted 2006/07/08 @ 17:50PM with
When writing this article, we should definately consider the other value they bring—SEO!
Masood Nasser
70 Reputation points
Posted 2006/07/11 @ 09:43AM with
Yes Christina, it is immensely valuable in SEO. Specially when designed with a lot of keyword density.
Rohan
Site Maps when designed properly, give more options to the user to get a clear picture of what the site has to offer. In today’s world of growing impatience, site maps are invaluable for sites with tons of content.
In a site with 1000+ pages, it is a no-brainer that u cannot list all pages. Therefore creating a site map would actually help in giving a starting place for users to find what they need.
Hacked UR Site
1 Reputation points
Posted 2006/07/14 @ 01:02AM with
Yes and No. Sitemaps are very good for SEO, but not for “keyword density”, but for better indexing. This page helps search engine crawlers to find all the pages on the site and index them. Keyword density has no value in todays SEO, moreover the efforts for increasing keyword density could be considered as spamming to trick the spiders, so better be careful.
On the other side, when we talk about users, it will be incorrect to consider site map as starting point on the website.Site Map should serve as Starting point for Search engines but not for the user.
Site map is good for assistance but if more and more users have to navigate to site map to find pages of interest then there is something wrong with your website navigation. Also for a website with more than 1000+ pages, do you think a user will care to visit it, dig all links to find a specific page? No, he/she won’t unless there is no other option and the user knows the specific information resides only on that perticular website and nowhere else.
As I said about other options, the best way for a user to reach to desired page would be the user-friendly navigation and having a Site Search. As a user I will first try to reach to page that holds interesting stuff with the Navigation available, if I couldn’t then I will use the Site Search and if all these fails then only I will go to Site Map and I think this is true for any other user.
Conclusion: Give importance to site maps from SEO perspective, and try to enhance other sections of website to reduce user visits to this page.
Masood Nasser
70 Reputation points
Posted 2006/07/14 @ 02:38AM with
My intention was about Information systems, not necessarily websites
Think about Enterprise Information architecture, where your audience is accessing your intranet from dozens of locations around the globe.
There a centralized repositories with thousands of documents, presentations, legal, etc. What site maps can do here is to give the user an idea of what to find where. Intranet search behavior can be very different from Web site search behavior. There is a lot of research that we have done on this subject.
Cheers
http://masoodnasser.blogspot.com