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Question on HTML sitemaps and new domain

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  • 07-05-2012 8:10pm
    #1
    seachto7
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,863 ✭✭✭


    Hi all,

    I had been doing some low level SEO on a website last year, that has now been updated.

    It was a small site and had a html sitemap in the footer. So, one thing I did was create additional landing pages targeting specific search terms. Rankings were pretty good for the site overall.

    A new site has been launched, and it doesn't include a html sitemap. It is only about 6 pages in total, and is not very content heavy.

    Would it be advisable to create a new html sitemap? Does it matter any more? How could I target additional search terms for on-page SEO. It is an accommodation site so no need for a large amount of pages really.

    I still submitted an XML sitemap to webmaster tools.

    Also, what about the "old" webpages that would have been indexed via the sitemap. Should I leave them be or delete them from the server?

    There is a blog on the new site, not a lot of pages, so I am thinking some good blog posts would be a good way of having "fresh" content on the site to begin with.

    Just one more question. A domain that was called "www.abcd.info" has been relaunced as "www.abcd.xyz.ie" (It's for a school).

    Would redirects be best to get the new site appearing in the rankings long term...


Comments

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    #2
    mneylon
    Registered Users Posts: 7,739 ✭✭✭mneylon


    If you're moving from domain to another for the same content you should setup a 301 redirect

    I don't really understand your question about HTML sitemaps - if the site's only got 5 or 6 pages and can be navigated sanely then I don't really see what you're trying to do .. Or am I missing something?

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    #3
    seachto7
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,863 ✭✭✭seachto7


    I suppose I am thinking of the sitemap in relation to creating landing pages that would target specific search terms.

    With 5 pages, only a certain amount of search terms can be targeted on page? So, if I had a sitemap, I could have, for example, an extra ten pages in it, but targeting different search terms?


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    #4
    LifeBeginsAt40
    Closed Accounts Posts: 328 ✭✭LifeBeginsAt40


    A site map is in simple terms a web page or file with a list of all your pages within your website.

    That's it.

    What most webmasters do is build a website, for example with 10 pages in it.
    They then create a file within the website directory, it can be .txt .xml .html

    This file contains a list of the URLs that make up the entire website. It can contain extra data such as how often a page is updated, when a page was last updated etc.

    That's all a sitemap is. A list of the URLs that make up your site.
    A sitemap is NOT the list of links that people display on a page towards the bottom.

    A sitemap is used to inform the search engines of pages within a website that they might otherwise not find, for reasons such as poor website design, password protected pages or complicated deep linking.

    An HTML sitemap is the same, but as it can be displayed as a standalone webpage it means that humans can also use it to find a web page on your site that might otherwise be hard to navigate to.


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    #5
    seachto7
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,863 ✭✭✭seachto7


    Ok, so I have an XML sitemap.

    Seems that a HTML sitemap would be pretty redundant for a small site. What about this secario:

    a b&b in Athlone. The homepage would focus on "b&b Athlone" and "bed and breakfast Athlone" for example.

    If I wanted to target "accommodation in athlone" and then "accommodation in west meath" or "bed and breakfast west meath", I couldn't really target all of them off the one page (or even two pages).

    So if I created near identical pages targeting the relevant search terms, and just put a link to them only in the HTML sitemap, would that help at all? Or is that pretty redundant too.


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    #6
    seachto7
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,863 ✭✭✭seachto7


    Blacknight wrote: »
    If you're moving from domain to another for the same content you should setup a 301 redirect

    Cheers for that. I would imagine over time the new domain would overtake the older one in organic....


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    #7
    mneylon
    Registered Users Posts: 7,739 ✭✭✭mneylon


    seachto7 wrote: »
    Cheers for that. I would imagine over time the new domain would overtake the older one in organic....

    Why?

    If you don't tell the search engines that you've switched domain they've no way of "guessing".

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    #8
    seachto7
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,863 ✭✭✭seachto7


    Blacknight wrote: »
    Why?

    If you don't tell the search engines that you've switched domain they've no way of "guessing".

    ....which is where the redirects come in.........:o:o


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    #9
    link8r
    Closed Accounts Posts: 387 ✭✭link8r


    Well, depending on the pages and search terms, it could be a little more complicated than that. I have a lot of experience of watching people migrating old domains and content to another domain, especially to brand new domains.

    Brand new domains that are not yet indexed will struggle. Google treats 301 as a strong signal but never take it for certain that an old domain 301'd to a new one will just elevate it.

    This is just general advice on 301's. 301's aren't a cure-all, and I don't know if OP is worried about individual pages which might be linked/ranking. You need to make sure that you have the same URL's on the new domain. Pages on the old domain may not link through properly without an exact match on the new one, even if you have have a 404 error page handler.

    HTH


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    #10
    seachto7
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,863 ✭✭✭seachto7


    I should have said that the domain is the same, it's the pages that have changed, so the /accommodation.html bit has changed for example...


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    #11
    link8r
    Closed Accounts Posts: 387 ✭✭link8r


    seachto7 wrote: »
    I should have said that the domain is the same, it's the pages that have changed, so the /accommodation.html bit has changed for example...

    Ok ... then it that case, 9 times out of ten, the new page will rise up but you're much better off to 301 it - almost 0 issue then :)


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