Site Map

Marketing
1

I am looking to create a site map to both aid the user and benefit SEO.

(1) I will have something very similar to www.apple.com/sitemap (with a link to it in the footer of every web page). I’m just planning on doing a html page, nothing special. Is this a good way to do it? Does it matter?

(2) Imagine a social network. If I did the Site Map like mentioned in point 1 above, would there be a benefit in adding some random links which would be to a randomly chosen list of forum profiles:

So:

Sitemap.

site.com/about
site.com/contact
(etc.)

and…
site.com/robert-smith
site.com/dave-brown

(these links are generated server-side randomly)

Is there a benefit to randomly add links like above - as this is to someone’s profile I can’t see how search engines would ever index profile pages. Imagine Facebook, how would use profile pages ever be indexed on that site?

(3) As well as the site map for website visitors I will generate an XML one to submit directly to all the search engines. Is this a good idea?

(4) A robots.txt file to tell robots where the sitemap.xml is.

Am I on the right track?

Have I missed anything?

2

The HTML sitemap will benefit your visitors, and the XML one will benefit the search engines, so both are worthwhile.

3

And have I got everything down correctly. Do I know what I am on about?

Can you suggest any improvements to my ideas?

4

Points (1), (3) and (4) look fine to me. Point (2) I’m not sure about.

5

Thanks for your help ralph.m - always good when learning yourself to get confirmation you’re on the right track.

Does anybody else know about (2)?

Thanks