Internal Linking: Thinking Inside The Box - Setting your sights on a site map
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An easy to understand site map is an essential element of any good website. The site map helps boost a site’s search engine rankings, and helps visitors find the information they seek while clicking around the site’s pages. Surprisingly, not every website has a site map as part of the overall design. Those website owners should rectify that situation as soon as possible.
As with any linking structure, the first consideration for the site map should be the website's users. If they can’t find the information they need, they will simply leave the site and give their money to a competitor. Fortunately, that scenerio doesn’t have to happen to your site. The site map remedies part of that problem with one fell swoop.
When setting up the site map, group the various internal directories into overall themes. Put related topics together to reinforce one another’s theme relevance. By doing so, you are helping the search engine spider recognize the overall themes and topics of the website. A well developed site map also enables the spiders to more thoroughly crawl a site’s directories by providing entries to those deeper Web pages.
The close interconnection of themes means better rankings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search. Site themes are a very important part of the search algorithms of all major search engines. A well designed site map also means easier usability for your potential paying customers. More convenient site navigation means your visitors can more easily purchase products and services from your site. Talk about getting good bang for the buck!
When setting up the site map, make certain that each link to the receiving page contains link anchor text specific to that page. For example, if the receiving page is about blue widgets, place the keyword phrase "blue widgets" in the site map link. The additional anchor text, pointing to the desired page, targets that page for that search term.
The added link anchor text reinforces the theme of the receiving page for the search engines, providing an added boost in the search rankings. The keywords also aid the site user by providing direct information about the content of the page being linked.
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