This allows you to separate and differentiate the links within a category, giving a different weight to
each, according to its function on your site.There is one limitation to site maps of which you should be aware. Site maps are limited to no more
than 50,000 URLs and 10 MB per map. And if you’re using multiple maps listed in a site-map index,
there can be no more than 1,000 site maps. This is a pretty large allowance, so you may not ever have
to worry about the limits, but you should still know what they are.Submitting your site map
After you’ve created your site map, you have two alternatives. You can leave the directive for the site
map in your robots.txt file and wait until a crawler comes along and finds it, or you can go ahead and
submit it to the search engines that you’re targeting.How you submit your site map to search engines may differ widely. For example, if you want to sub-
mit your site map to Google, you need to create a Google Account and link it to the Webmaster Tools
section of Google. Once you’ve created an account, you can submit your site map from that interface.
With Yahoo!, you’ll have to go through a similar process. And with other search engines the process
will also be similar, though some of the details may differ.Submitting your site map to one of the search engines won’t guarantee that all the pages on your
site will be crawled, or that they will be included in SERPs. However, the site map gives the crawler
some direction, so it will help improve the crawling that your site receives. This is no guarantee of
where your site will rank, but at least you’ll know that it has been reviewed as thoroughly as it can
be, given the control that the crawler has on the situation.238
Part III Optimizing Search Strategies
75002c16.qxd:Layout 1 11/7/07 9:55 AM Page 238