Miss Information... on Site Maps

Re: Smart real estate marketing strategies for 2005 by Bernice Ross.

Dear Inman News Editor:

Thank you for your article: Smart real estate marketing strategies for 2005 by Bernice Ross. I love that you are making information available to real estate agents and brokers about: The power of the Web. I came across some misinformation in Miss Ross' article that I think your readers should know are incorrect. I do hope that you make these corrections available to your readers, as I would not want your readers to use this misinformation and be banned by search engines.

Miss Ross writes:

"Include a site map: A site map summarizes the content of your Web site, usually at the bottom of your home page. In many cases, the site map is only visible to the search engine, rather than to your Web visitors. Most search engines only "spider" (read) your home page. This means the search engine may not access all the features on your site. To circumvent this difficulty, ask your Web site provider whether your current site has a site map. If not, add one as soon as possible."

A site map by definition is a directory of a website with links to all of the pages on it.

Site Maps are Search Engine Spider Friendly

Search engines do not "only Spider your home page"; this would defeat the whole purpose of a search engine spider - which is to follow hyperlinks. Spidering of the homepage only, occurs when the code of a website has spiderability issues that inhibit the spider form following all available website links. This is the reason why site maps are a great addition to real estate website. Because now, the spider can crawl all of the links in a website even if the site employs advanced technologies such as Flash and JavaScript.

Site maps give search engine spiders all of the possible links to information on your website, so that they will crawl and index all of the pages in your real estate website. This increases the visibility of your website on search engines and gives you the best chance of getting all of the URLs of your website included in a search engine's index.

Site Maps are User Friendly

Site maps give users of real estate website created by real estate software quick access to all the pages in a website. Site maps let visitors know what information you have, how it's organized, and where it's at on your website.

How many times have you been on a search engine and searching for say “widgets” when you see a search engine result that looks to be all about widgets, but when you get to that page there is nothing about "widgets"? The first thing I do in this situation is look for a site map. The site map helps me locate the "widgets" page, I am happy and I come back to the website in the future when looking for information about "widgets". This is why I love site maps.

BTW: Who decided that "widgets" was the word to use when not being specific about something? I guess it's the same people who came up with the name "John Doe" for a random person, huh?

Oh, yes... back to Site Maps….

Most importantly regarding: "... the site map is only visible to the search engine, rather than to your Web visitors." Please do not encourage your readers to include text that is "only visible to search engines."

This practice is considered "Spam" by Search Engines. The MSN Guidelines specifically say: "You should use only text and links that are visible to users and may cause a website to be penalized or worse banned."

A real estate website should be both user friendly and search engine friendly. This is what makes a site map such a great addition to a real estate website.

If you would like to read more on search engine spam, an excellent article can be found on Search Engine Watch from the last Search Engine Strategies Conference titled: What Exactly Is Search Engine Spam?

Natasha Robinson
Official Desktop
http://www.OfficialDesktop.com
Software That Supports Your Focus


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