sitemaps?

as forum owners is it a good thing to use a sitemap? If so, mine is crap, where can I actually make a download a good one?

tnx!

 

I'd recommend it, a sitemap is worth more than SEO (Pretty) URLs and things like that. If it's for vBulletin I know there is a mod as well as with many other forum software choices. It would be better given the dynamic nature of forum content if you could go with a mod instead of having to manually re-generate a sitemap every so often.

 

VBulletin 4 is supposed to have a built in sitemap generator. Just wait for that one.

In some webmaster tools you can also submit your RSS feed as your sitemap.

 

Sitemaps are overrated IMHO
If you have a good internal link structure, sitemaps aren't needed at all.
The only thing they are good for is google webmaster tools so you can track how many sites link back to your pages.

 

In my opinion, for some forums, sitemaps are an absolute must have. There is this SMF forum that I am a member of. It has 629,718 Posts, 52,127 Topics and is a little over 5 years old.

Care to guess how many pages google has indexed of that forum? A whopping 1,820.

Out of 52,127 threads, and 629,718 Posts - google has only indexed 1,820 pages.

Something is wrong there.

In cases like that, a sitemap might help get more pages indexed.

 

care to share the url?
I still think if a site has good internal links, a sitemap isn't needed.

 

Sure, but in private message only.

some forums do not deserve to have their name mentioned, much less a link posted.

 

I understand
and as i stated, if that site had a better link structure setup, they would be indexed better.
Even if it's just a few links in the footer to their major section, it would help.

 

I didn't realize site maps were of use to search engines.. I setup a site map on my site, but I just organized all the links manually.

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/sitemap.php

Is there anything I should do to that to help Google? My original goal with that page was to help lost members.

 

Add your sitemap location to your google webmaster tools.

Or, add your sitemap location to your robots.txt file - that way all search engines will be able to find it.

 

so how/where is the best place to get my sitemap? google webmaster tools is hard for me to use...dik why...it just is...

 

Do you have a sitemap generator installed?

 

installed where? I got a sitemap installed right now, but it hasnt been updated in a long time.

 

Install this: vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator - vBulletin.org Forum

I believe you don't need vBSEO for it to work.

 

Yes, this is a great add-on. It's actually one of my favorites! Install it, set it to run daily, and do the following:

1. Submit it in your Google Webmaster Tools console
2. Update your robots.txt to point to the location of the sitemap. (Just add to the bottom of your robots.txt file: sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml)

 

^^ that werks pretty good eh? Helps bring in search engine traffic?

 

Theoretically, yes.