site_map

I have read almost every thread. got allot of infomation here, thanks. I really liked the tip about web position pro. I was running the reporter every day for last 2 months. That may explain why the drop in PR from last week, from what I read and also my position.
If someone would take a look at my site map and tell me if it is both people and search engine friendly. I think I did it right.

http://www.italianplasters.com/site_map.htm

Doyle,

Actually this isn't a sitemap, but a links section, which is fine, but won't help you get your own pages indexed. A sitemap is used to help your visitors navigate the site better and also to help Google index all your pages quicker.

Basically, do the same thing you've done for your links section, but for your own pages, and make sure you have a link to the sitemap from your homepage.

Gringo.

Thank you Gringo for the reply. I'm very glad I asked. I will do some more research to see if I can understand the difference.
I was reading about doorway pages last night. Would my 120 pages to my applicators be considered one? My thought was that I would put up a mini website for each of them on my site. They get alot of interest from my site.
Doyle

I wouldnt worry about these, a doorway page is a page just generated to increace PR by putting in a buch of keywords. My general rule of thumb is create pages for visitors not spiders, if visitors dont want to see them, then search engines dont either. I mean you have to put in keywords, but make the page more visitor friendly. If people only come because the search engine sent them there, then you wont get repeat visitors/sales. So i wouldnt worry about these pages. If people like them then they should stay. If you are worried, exclude them in your robots.txt file, but leave them up for visitors!

-Josh

very sage advice from Josh... it says it all... if it ain't good for visitors, then it ain't good for the big G.

Think of it this way, if you were a person doing a search, what do you want to have returned by a search engine.. a bunch of doorway pages or the "meat"... that thinking will get you higher rankings..

zen

Thanks Guys.
I have the applicators site for other people to see not searh engines. What do you put to exclude the SE?
Doyle

create a robots text file

http://www.robotstext.org

zen

i took a peak at your site map page and i'd suggest that you add a brief description of each page, along with the link to it (and certainly be sure to include your keywords!) this will help make the site map page a little more search engine friendly.

Thanks Lowell
Will make changes tonight.