I have a forum which is accessible at URL like -http://www.mydomain.com/XXX/. The "root" page of the site at the moment shows directories.

Do i need to put some sort of sitemap to point the bots to the forum to index it?

Any other advices about making my forum site SEO-friendly is greatly appreciated.

Thanx,
Eugene.

egold2005 wrote:I have a forum which is accessible at URL like -http://www.mydomain.com/XXX/. The "root" page of the site at the moment shows directories.

Do i need to put some sort of sitemap to point the bots to the forum to index it?

Any other advices about making my forum site SEO-friendly is greatly appreciated.

Thanx,
Eugene.

Hi Eugene,

Yes site map is essential. There are two types of site map. Xml sitemap and HTML sitemap. HTML sitemap help the users to navigate easily and XML sitemap is essential for the visibility of a site by search engine crawler. Both are equally important and essential for a site. some main advantages of Xml sitemap and additional features too which HTML sitemap doesn't have:
* To crawl all the web pages of a site frequently.
* It helps the spider in fast indexing.
* It allows search engine to rank accurately.
* Can set the priority for each page to crawl.

The xml sitemap is uploaded as a file on the server. It can be created manually or can be downloaded from the sites which allow automatic generation of these kinds of sitemaps. The best way to optimize the site with the sitemap is to submit Xml sitemap in Google Webmaster tool. The only thing to remember is there should not be any broken links and it should be well organized too.

so at the end site map is needed for every site.

Could you help me about sitemap? I have problem with installing sitemap for my sites. Could you give my step by step? Thanks.

In addition, the site map inserted through Google Webmaster Central facilitate indexing googlebot.

sitemap is essential because it has link to each & every thing in your site.