Google Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide - Manual (Page 10)

Google's Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008, latest version at Google Webmaster Central
A sitemap (lower-case) is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your website and
usually consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your site. Visitors may visit this page if they are
having problems finding pages on your site. While search engines will also visit this page, getting good
crawl coverage of the pages on your site, it's mainly aimed at human visitors.
An XML Sitemap (upper-case) file, which you can submit through Google's
Webmaster Tools , makes it
easier for Google to discover the pages on your site. Using a Sitemap file is also one way (though not
guaranteed) to tell Google which version of a URL you'd prefer as the canonical one (e.g.
http://brandonsbaseballcards.com/ or http://www.brandonsbaseballcards.com/; more on
what's a
preferred domain ). Google helped to create the open-source Sitemap Generator script to help you
create a Sitemap file for your site. To learn more about Sitemaps, the Webmaster Help Centre provides
a useful
guide to Sitemap files .
Good practices for site navigation
• Create a naturally flowing hierarchy - Make it as easy as possible for users to go from
general content to the more specific content that they want on your site. Add navigation pages
when it makes sense and effectively work these into your internal link structure.
Avoid:
•
creating complex webs of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site to
every other page
•
going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (it takes twenty clicks to get
to deep content)
•
Use mostly text for navigation - Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your
site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site.
Many users also prefer this over other approaches, especially on some devices that might not
handle Flash or JavaScript.
Avoid:
•
having navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images or animations
(many, but not all search engines can discover such links on a site, but if a user
can reach all pages on a site via normal text links, this will improve the
accessibility of your site; more on
how Google deals with non-text files )
• Use "breadcrumb" navigation - A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of
the page that allows visitors to navigate back quickly to a previous section or the root page.
Many breadcrumbs have the most general page (usually the root page) as the first, left-most
link and list the more specific sections to the right.
Breadcrumb links appearing on a deeper article page on our site