Google Site map?

[PennieNPence]

I'm trying to make a site map for Google.

I did a Google search and came up with about 267,000,000 results

I did a forum search here only came up with the ROR generator, which I downloaded and wasn't really a big fan of.

So, here are my questions:

1) Is it better to make a graphical site map,
(so visitors can use it also)
or a .xml site map that only SE's can read?

2) Would it be better to just make a page of text links
(if so how do you design it so it knows importance of the page)
or to use a site map generator?

3) If generators are better.....
Which one did you use or recommend?

Any help would be greatly appreciated..
and thanks

[Tom vR]

Re: Google Site map?

Hi Pennies, I have followed Navaldesign's advice on this one. This is what he said:

There are two different kinds of sitemaps:

1. The visual ones. These contain all the links to all your pages that you want indexed by SE. Usually a link to the sitemap page is contained in the homepage.Once a SE has found your dite, it also discovers (from the homepage link) the sitemap page and from there all your pages URLs. This is a human sitemap, but serves as well for SEs too.
2. The SE sitemaps. These are only for SE use, and yes, they are usually in xml (like ROR). It does the same job, but only for SEs.

You can see it in post 282 of this thread: Your Google Sitemap ( 1 2 3 ... Last Page)

Edited: So I've went for the visual one.

[LadyEye]

Re: Google Site map?

I use the ROR ... and it's important to keep it updated too, as you add other pages at other times ..

If you have the navigation to your other pages on your site then this would be the visual for the visitors ... and these links should be picked up by the ror generator ...

[pristinelife]

Re: Google Site map?

I used BOTH and hyperlinked them too. I hope this is permissible with the SE's

[PennieNPence]

Re: Google Site map?

Thank you all for your input.

I found this one and it makes a really detailed and customizable Site Map. It also includes images in the map(which it gives you a "break out" script for also so you can get rid of the Google banner at the top on image Google searches) :

http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp

I liked it mainly because it runs in your browser off java.
You can also save the finished file to your computer, then import it back in to there program (at a later date) and do a search for only the things you have changed to update your SM.

What do you all think of this one?

After all of this I realized that I probably shouldn't create the first site map till I populate the pages with product and create page 2...3...4..etc. for that category.

Oops I think I put the cart before the horse again....

At least I know more now for when I do create it.

I used BOTH and hyperlinked them too. I hope this is permissible with the SE's

This is also some thing I was wondering about
If you use both types of SM, should you link them together?

Thanks again for all of your guys help.

[philipc9635]

Re: Google Site map?

Just tried the auditmypc but it didn't find all my pages for some reason????

[PennieNPence]

Re: Google Site map?

Did you read the whole page before you went into the program?

You can expand and collapse any of the pages. Those pages may be in a sub category of another page.