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Getting Ready For Cyber Monday: Do You Have Your Sitemap Prepared?
November 16, 2007

Cyber Monday is the first Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday.  The day that people return to their desks, hungover and tired of the holiday crowds already, and decide to spend their work hours searching for gifts and shopping.  Is your web site prepared?

Not everybody has the easiest navigation on their site.  I get overwhelmed with eBay's and tend to go straight for their sitemap to find everything in one quick swoop.  Search engines require this when crawling your site, as well as people like me who spend Cyber Monday shopping.  Where do you start?

For the shopping crowd:

1. Layout your navigation headings with their appropriate links
2. Add the subcategories names and links
3. Add the other relevant links in logical fashion (shipping, returns, payment options in one category and gift advice, decorating, etc. in another).  You think I'm crazy for mentioning this, but people do lump them all together.
4. Be sure to use keywords that people will search on in your site (diamond watches, Ugg boots, Trek mountain bikes)

For the search engines:

1. They prefer a XML or text document listing out every page with its appropriate link.  If you have a huge list of sites, I recommend using a sitemap generator.
   • Google Sitemap Generator
   • Audio my PC tutorial & additional information
   • XML-Sitemaps
   • Sitemap Doc (limited to 500 pages)
   • sitemaps.org (information on how you build one yourself)
2. For more information about how Google indexes your site, visit their webmaster tools

After your sitemap is created, submit to the search engines:

• Yahoo
• Google

Posted by Suze Bragg on November 16, 2007 | Comments (0)