Hi Gurus
Can anyone explan me how Google sitemap help us to increase our site popularity. I saw few
postings about the site map earlier, but still not sure about how it works.
Thanks lot in Advance!!

The idea behind Sitemaps is that if you're having trouble getting pages indexed you can let Google know what pages you have on your site and help get them into the index. Sitemaps has also been adding some statistics on your pages and site in general.

Other than helping get pages in the index it's not about increasing a site's popularity or ranking. I've even seen a lot of people say their sites have done worse since joining Sitemaps, though I've seen others say they've had no problems.

If you build a site that makes it easy for search spiders to find your pages and add a sitemap page on your site you probably won't need to join the Google Sitemaps program. I never have and all, but my newest pages have been indexed.

Thanks vangogh for the information!!!

you are about the pages that you have on your site to google

I was thinking about putting a google sitemap on my site until reading this post. I don't have that many pages, however, I would like to get my new pages indexed quicker. I have a couple questions on the issure: First, is a static html site map linked to the home page, with no meta tag key words, and a list of my site urls with a long organic explaination that is keyword rich, the best way to put a sitemap on? Second, is there a quantity limitation of your internal pages you should put on a site map (such as there is on a link out page) Third, if I create a html page and I list it in my site map, from a SE point of view, is it necessary to link it to another page?

First the sitemap page you add to your site and Google Sitemaps are two different things. You don't put a Google Sitemap on your site. With Google Sitemaps you submit a file to them telling them what pages are on your site.

The sitemap page that you add to your site is simply an html page like any other on your site. It's content is a list of links to the other pages on your site. you really don't need to worry about optimizing that page with meta tags or anything else. It's not a page you're generally concerned with having ranked. It's main purpose is to provide the links so the search engine spiders can find and crawl your other pages.

I'll usually add a little bit of text to the page as a description of where the link will take you. That's for any people that might look at the page.

100 links on the page seems to be the recommended maximum so if you have more you can make sitemap2.html. The reason you want to have a link on your home page to your sitemap is that typically your home page will be the first one spider finds. Providing a link to your site map on the home page means all the other links to your site can be found within one page of the home page.

The speed at which your site gets indexed is really up to search engines and how easy it is for spiders to crawl your site. Adding a sitemap page to your site can help them crawl the site faster.

Again Google Sitemaps is something different in the sense that you don't add a Google Sitemap to your site. If you use the Google Sitemap program you will be creating a file to submit to Google.

Thankyou for the information! I did not know that about the Google Site map. I have heard that if a sitemap has PR, the pages listed on it usually have better PR. I have optimised the Site Map. Did I make a mistake? Second, from what I gather, the sitemap being one click below the home page just means that the pages get crawled faster. Not that after they do, they will have better PR.

There's nothing wrong with optimizing your sitemap page. It's not a pge I consider a great landing page for my site so I'm not concerned with that page showing up in a search result. I added the page to my site for two reasons. One for anybody that had trouble finding something there would be a page listing the pages on my site. Two for search spiders to be able to find all those pages on my site.

I really don't think much in terms of PR. Technicaly if your sitemap page will help any page it links to gain some PR, but the one link probably won't make a major difference.

The idea of having the a link on the home page to the sitemap is to help search spiders find your sitemap and consequently the links on the sitemap page faster. Ideally it will mean your pages will get indexed sooner.

Thankyou very much for your great information! Okay... from now on, I will only give a text link and a few words of description to the page, as you have suggested. On these sites with more than a 1000 pages how do you handle getting them linked so that they get spidered. I can only think of cascading the sitemaps. ie) a link from one site map to another, since you have suggested limiting the sitemap to 100 links. Also, does it make a difference in the PR and SEO wieght of the page and the value of the links out of the page if you put them more than one click under the home page? Or just the time of spidering them.

That's fine. Google recommends having a second sitemap page if you have more than 100 links. I think having one linked to the next will be enough. You can probably set it up with navigation on the sitemap page for the additional pages. Maybe a bottom navigation that lists page 1, page 2, page 3, etc.

Having the sitemap linked from the home page is really about getting the spiders to the page(s) faster. I wouldn't be concerned with PR when it comes to your sitemap. It's main goal is just to have spiders find your pages as quickly and easily as possible. You can check my site to see how I've set it up if you want. My sitemap isn't anything elaborate. Mostly just a list of links to other pages of my site.

Sounds Great! I think I am headed in the right direction now! You told me to check your site, but there is no URL. Can you give me one, please? I plan on giving two "organic" links back to the home page on each blog I write with its own file and list each file into a sitemap. I plan on stringing the sitemaps in a cascaded configuration linking the first sitemap to the home page. I will add my articles in the same fashion. I understand from what you have said that cascading the html files on the same level does not make a difference in the SEO wieght aspect from each link. ie) /link1.html linked to the home page provides the same SEO wieght value as linked to - say... /recommended.html (when recommended and link1 are on the same level) Thanks...

Glad to help. My site is any of the links in my signature. The sitemap link is in the bottom navigation on the right. It's pretty much on all pages. There's a few here and there that don't have that bottom navigation, but I think all the pages in my sig will have it.

Oh... so you do YellowHost Hosting. Web Design and Development. Good idea... my sites are A Russian Sweet and contents.

You should add your sites to your forum signature. That way the links will be there everytime you post.

thats a helpful info here ... thanx all!

I will do that. Thanks...

Okay... my sites are added to my siginiture.

Cool. You now have 42 backlinks for those pages. At least as I'm writing this you have 42 posts. They probably don't all carry the same weight, but still a quick way to get some links.