You Need More Than One Site Map - ROR Site Maps for All Search Engines
(Page 3 of 4 )
ROR site maps are the perfect tool to achieve better search engine rankings, even in worst case scenarios. High rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs) are necessary for achieving the web site traffic you need. If you are not within the top three pages of search results, you are practically invisible. If you have broken links, consider yourself even worse off.
ROR (Resources of a Resource) is a rapidly growing independent XML format for describing any object of your content in a generic fashion so that ALL search engines can easily read it. This makes it a perfect site map version to put directly on the web site, alongside the HTML version for human visitors. By incorporating an ROR site map into your web site, you are guaranteeing that all of your pages will be indexed and appear somewhere in search results -- and if by chance any of your natural links are broken, the site map will have them working.
Another major benefit to placing a search-engine friendly site map on your web site is that it fixes the problems that arise from having a database driven, dynamic site or URL. Search engines prefer static sites or URLs, which sufficiently enables them to browse page links and index them accordingly. While many large product web sites have little to no alternatives to continuing to use a database-driven, dynamic web site, an independent site map can accomplish this goal.
ROR site maps are the perfect answer for directing ALL search engines to your inner pages, regardless of broken links or nasty dynamic URLs. It is an all-in-one solution that helps ALL search engine robots explore and index your site appropriately.
Submit Different Types For Different Sites
To increase search engine rankings you may actually submit your site maps to your chosen search engine. By doing this, your web site will quickly get "spidered" and indexed in their database, instead of waiting for the bots to find you.
Each search engine has a preferred format, though, for submitting site maps. Google prefers XML while Yahoo accepts text versions. A text version site map that can be submitted to Yahoo is not the same as the HTML-based site map used by on-site visitors.
These submitted site maps solve the same issues that the on-site ROR site map does, except in a much faster way. They get your information to the preferred site so you can get indexed in their databases quickly. You may even program these site maps to tell the search engine when they should revisit and re-spider your site for new content to include in search results.
Next: Google and XML >>
More Search Optimization Articles
More By Justin Pinkus
