Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [177]
When the product images are the same size and ordered consistently throughout the page, the horizontal reading lines allow a quick scan of the images, product information, and pricing along the same row. Vermont Teddy Bear uses the site search technology from SLI Systems that provides related searches, clear and consistent arrangement of products, and consistent product images (see Figure 15-18).
Figure 15-18: Vermont Teddy bear uses the internal site search to provide clear product images and details.
Thursday: Consider Site Maps
Two types of site maps need to be covered in this section. The first is the site map that is available to your visitors, which is a type of directory to the content of the website. The second is a site map that is developed specifically for the search engines and submitted to them as a catalog of all the documents in your website that you want included in the search engines’ databases. These are distinctly different files and should not be confused.
Visitor Site Map
The visitor site map is a page that provides a structural overview of the content of the website. Some visitors may navigate this way on a website, and traditional SEO wisdom says that this is a resource page for the search engines as well. By providing a top-level page that contains links to primary and secondary categories, pages, and important information, visitors are able to see all the information provided by the website in a hierarchical structure. This enables them to make a decision about what page to select by seeing it in context with the rest of the information. As a nice side benefit, this page is a similar resource to search engines. To clarify, the visitor site map is used by both humans and search engines, but the search engine site map is accessed only by search engines. It allows the search engines a single point of access to multiple pages of the website.
The problem is that some have allowed this file to become an overdeveloped link page, with the intent of getting more pages indexed more frequently in the search engines. In doing so, it ceases to become a resource for any visitor who may use the page, which was the primary reason.
The site map page is a resource first and foremost for the visitor, and it should be structured to reflect the information architecture of the website: high-level categories, subcategories, and important information. Attempting to place a link to every single page in the website on this page just transforms it into an unwieldy, overstuffed page (Figure 15-19).
Figure 15-19: BadcreditLoanCenter.com uses the site map to list every page, article, and resource ever published to the website, rather than a contextual approach that would be easier to navigate. (The page is much longer than the screenshot can show!)
In addition, develop the categories on the page with context. Adding short descriptions to content and categories that can use additional defining will help the visitor distinguish among similar content and aid in their search for specific answers or information.
Use this page to quickly communicate the structure of the website and allow the visitor to navigate the page itself quickly and logically, finding the relevant information (Figure 15-20).
Figure 15-20: ATT.com uses a site map effectively with clear category headings and related links to the content.
Search Engine Site Map
The search engine site map file is an XML structured document that contains the typical information necessary to describe each page on a website. The document contains meta information, content, and URLs and is meant to provide the search engines with the content they need in case they have not been able to index the website.
Many webmasters have created and submitted this file via www.sitemaps.org, a joint source for the search engines, or they have simply submitted the file to each individual search engine. However, this is not a necessary task for inclusion to the search engines, and I recommend