Usability considerations

It’s not always possible to please both your site users and the crawlers that determine your page ranking. It is possible, however, to work around problems. Of course, the needs of users come first because once you get them to your site you want them to come back. On the Internet, it’s extremely easy for users to surf away from your site and never look back. And returning visits can make or break your site.

But the catch is that in order to build returning visitors, you have to build new visitors, which is the purpose of SEO. That means you need search engines to take notice of your site.

When it seems that users’ preferences are contrary to crawlers’ preferences, there is a solution. It’s a site map. And there are two types of which you should be aware. A basic site map is an overview of the navigational structure of your web site. It’s usually text-based, and it’s nothing more than an overview that includes links to all of the pages in your web site. Crawlers love site maps. You should, too.

A site map allows you to outline the navigational structure of your web site, down to the second or third level of depth, using text-based links that should include anchors and keywords. An example of a site map for the Work.com.

When a site map exists on your web page, a search engine crawler can locate the map and then crawl all of the pages that are linked from it. All of those pages are then included in the search engine index and will appear on search engine results pages. Where they appear on those SERPs is determined by how well the SEO is done for each individual page.

A second type of site map, the XML site map, is different from what you think of as a site map in both form and function. An XML site map is a file that lists all of the URLs for a web site. This file is usually not seen by site visitors, only by the crawlers that index your site. There are more specifics on XML.

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