sitemap positioning

I am developing a rework of a company's site, and I have the 'sitemap' link as the very first text on the page. I have it there for 2 reasons
1. My research into usability for disabled users said that a sitemap should be the first text a browser hits on a page as it helps the screen reader go directly to a simple navigation that can be displayed as large text.
2. I was under the impression that a spider, if it hits your sitemap first can more quickly index your whole site from the links on the sitemap page. It can register all your internal links quickly and easily.

However my predecessor when looking at my developing site said it should be at the bottom of the page (as on the orbis site that he designed).

From both a SEO and usability perspective, wht are people's views on this - is it just a personal preference, or does it make a difference where you position the link to your site map?

thanks

I would suggets bottom, nobody puts sitemap on the top. My 2c.

i like your thinking about how that would be more useful for the disabled, but is the percentage of disabled vs. non-disabled users large enough to warrant such a drastic change from the norm(bottom of page) ?

as for the spiders, they will find it top or bottom, so i don't see much gain going top.

all IMHO.

-SH

Hi everyone,

just wanted to add my 2c worth. I'm a big metrics and usability dork, lol. I've been following this guy Bryan Eisenberg at Grokdotcom.com for a while now. And his specialty is in usability and increasing website conversion rates. In theory in makes
sense to have the site map linked up in both places, that way if during the page scanning process what the visitor is looking for
is not found it is easily accessible no matter which end of the page you're on.

My advice to you would be to look at the design conventions of your client's competitors. And base your decision from there.
If they do it, then visitors to your clients site will expect that same information to be located in a similar place.

-Greg J.

I have links to my sitemap in a dhtml menu at the top of my main pages, as well as hard coded at the bottom of main pages. That way, it's available both top and bottom.

The suggestion of considering the needs of your visitors is a good one. If you have a lot of people that would benefit from a sitemap link at the top of the page, that's where I'd put it. But it is handy to also have a link at the bottom, for those who didn't find what they wanted on the page, or for those who liked the page well enough that they want to see more of the site.

Drew