How many keywords in the sitemap?

[topcatgym]

Hello there,

This may sound like a stupid question. One of my keywords for my website is window cleaning london. I've used this as a page in my sitemap. If for example I wanted another key word like window cleaning Tottenham (this is area in London) would it be best to do a totally new page. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that for every keyword is it best to have a new page in the sitemap?

[Karen Mac]

Re: How many keywords in the sitemap?

Top

I think you maybe have your sitemaps confused. It sounds like you are trying to make a sitemap thats visible to the general public as an aid to navigation? In that instance, you are rather going about it backwards, I think.

What you would list is Your locations, and the topic would be Window Cleaning Locations, or London Window Cleaning locations, with a branch down to Tottenham, and the next branch the next location, and so on. Always design for the customer FIRST and then the SE.

Now with that said, a sitemap is supposed to LINK your pages, not your keywords, do you actually have a Tottenham PAGE? You could link it to the anchoring text of Tottenham, but again, design the map for the customer to use, not just the SE.

Karen

[philipc9635]

Re: How many keywords in the sitemap?

Hey Topcatgym

I don't know if you've seen it but theres a sitemap generator located at the following thread that is pretty easy to use.

http://www.vodahost.com/vodatalk/google/3309-your-google-sitemap.html?highlight=sitemap

All the best

[LadyEye]

Re: How many keywords in the sitemap?

If you have enough content about each location that may be different from the other, then by all means make each a separate page. If however, you do not, then one page and list your locations.

[Bethers]

Re: How many keywords in the sitemap?

Remember, you are designing the website first and foremost for the people who will be coming and using it. You then tweak for the se's also.

[motoxxx]

Re: How many keywords in the sitemap?

If you can have the content for each page be a bit different even if it is for the exact same service, I would add seperate pages for each location. You don't want to get caught by the search engines duplicate content filters so changing up your content from page to page is a good idea. Adding more pages does a couple of different things

1. It keeps the weight of your keywords in the title and description focussed on each location without dilluting the weight of the other main key word. This will help you with getting each page found when someone searches by georgraphical areas. So, if you have a page that is optimised for "window cleaning London", adding the word "Tottenham" would take some of the importance of the word "London" away in the title. Keep the focus on just one keyword and you will see better results. You can optimise pages for more than one keyword and have some success doing so but I have found that for all of my sites, I get way better results if I focus on one main keyword per page. I do get decent results from other search terms on these one key word phrases simply due to latent symantic indexing. You probably will too.

2. When you add pages to your site, you are increasing the size of your site and therefore the importance of it in the eyes of the search engines. Search engines look for sites that can be considered "Authority" websites and adding more pages to your sites increases the importance overall. That is, so long as the content is relevant to the rest of your site. It also helps as the search engines will spider the links on each page that point to all of your other pages. Since you should have a link to your most important pages of your site in your template, those pages will also increase in importance as there is more links pointing to them.

[Bethers]

Re: How many keywords in the sitemap?

I agree and disagree with Motoxx - as unless you are offering a different service to each location - I think you'll be hard pressed to do a separate page to each location with unique content. If you can - then go for it.

The content on the pages is much more important than the number of pages for authority purposes. Same as linking. Some people think that getting the most links is the important thing - but it's getting the quality links that matters the most.

And, Motoxx - I believe you mean one keyword phrase per page - as one keyword would be really, really pushing it. I usually have one to three keyword phrases I emphasize and it works very well for me. When it comes to my websites with products - even the product pages have more than one keyword phrase each in many cases. For example, I have kids computer desks. I will also optimize that page for children's computer desks and toddler computer desks. I wouldn't try to do those on e separate pages.

The main point is - do what works for your customers first, then think of the se's. Because if you forget the customer's, and tweak entirely to get the se help - you'll not do yourself any good - as the customer's won't stay and buy (or do what you need them to do).

[motoxxx]

Re: How many keywords in the sitemap?

Quote:
"And, Motoxx - I believe you mean one keyword phrase per page - as one keyword would be really, really pushing it. I usually have one to three keyword phrases I emphasize and it works very well for me. When it comes to my websites with products - even the product pages have more than one keyword phrase each in many cases. For example, I have kids computer desks. I will also optimize that page for children's computer desks and toddler computer desks. I wouldn't try to do those on e separate pages.....:"

Yes Bethers, I did mean one "keyword phrase" per page. Thank you for the correction. It is much easier to optimize for a single "keyword phrase" per page and have your copy focus on that phrase and using the latent symantec indexing to pick up on other relevency. I would agree that for the terms you are describing for your site that it makes sense to use varying descriptive words used to describe virtually the exact same product....this is latent symantec indexing...Using common terms that would be related to, or easily found in describing a product or service or anything for that matter. So for what you are doing, optimizing for "kids computer desks", "childrens computer desks", and "toddlers computer desks" makes perfect sense.

However, if you were to offer a service that is targeted for multiple geographic locations, such as window cleaning, someone searching for a window cleaner online would most likely get results that are so broad that they will begin to naturally narrow the focus of their search. I deal with this every day.....It is when that user begins to narrow the focus of their search that the geographically targeted focus begins and the business owner that operates in a more narrowly targeted geographic area will be able to target their potential customers in that geographic region. So for TopCatGym and his window cleaning business, it would make much more sense to put up seperate pages that focus on each geographic location.

If we were in England, and I searched for "Window cleaning" as my root search, I get lots of directories for window cleaners, lots of US based companies, and some sites on tips for window cleaning....This doesn't really help me much....So I search again, this time searching for Window Cleaning UK, Now I get lots of results for window cleaning tools and supplies in the UK...So now I search again, using "window cleaning london" as my query...AHHHH here we go....I have geographically narrowed my search and I am now looking and specific service business in my geographic location.
By focussing a page for whatever geographic location TopCatGym wants, he should be able to get a pretty decent web pressence without too much trouble. This is why I said in my original post that it would be best to target each page of each city or town....because that is the way people search for what he offers. Adding in too much about other locations can dillute the impact of what he is targeting. I did learn this the hard way!...Man....was it ever the hard way!

As far as authority sites go, having a larger site does help you with importance in the eyes of the SEs. If your internal link structure is descriptive using anchor text instead of java buttons etc AND you have good content...the search engines will place some weight on your internal links to your own pages almost like they would place on anchor text links coming in from another site. This will work up to a point but you must also be careful not to over do it as with everything as far as seo goes.

I have proved this theory to be very sound as I have a brand new site with a page rank of "0", that has just barely been found by the search engines, only has about 80 TOTAL back links (none from reciprical linking) that is already showing up at #8 on MSN search for hypercompetitive search terms out of over 5,600,000 results. It can never hurt to add more pages. Even if you disagree with this theory, my results are speaking for themselves ( at least to me and my colleagues!) and my bank account is growing because of it.

Having a larger site with great content also makes it much easier for people to want to link to you.....And we both know how much taht can help!