2

I submitted my website/app to Bing and Google recently. I subsequently received this email from bing:

Dear Webmaster, This is a weekly report on the open issues categories we have detected on your site. http://example.com/ Sitemaps 1 Please visit the Bing Webmaster Tools at your convenience for detailed information. Thanks, Bing Webmaster Team To unsubscribe or change the frequency of this message, please visit the Bing Webmaster Tools to update your preference.

As it is a one-page site (I do dynamically open external pages, but that's not the same thing), I didn't think a SiteMap would make much sense in my case - after all, 100% of the weight would go to the only page of mine that the user sees, namely default.cshtml

Following the link they proved above, I see:

Submit a sitemap for example.com Site: http://example.com/ Date: 9/15/2013 Priority: Normal You haven't submitted a sitemap or it has been a while since you submitted one. You can submit sitemaps in in many formats using the Sitemaps tool. Creating and submitting sitemaps is easy. Learn more. Thanks, The Bing Webmaster Team

The info there says that I could submit (among other options):

Text (a plain text file containing one URL per line)

Would doing so be potentially beneficial for me, or would it be a waste of time, being that I only have the one page? The data I would like them to index (that contains things users might search for, such as the names of movies, books, music, artists, authors, etc.) are in .json files and ancillary .cshtml files (whose contents are loaded dynamically based on user actions, namely making selections from "combo boxes."

So the above-mentioned text file would contains entries such as www.example.com/Content/pulitzers2.json and www.example.com/getHugos.cshtml? Does anybody know would that be the type of entry to add to the sitemap file?

UPDATE

I reckon my sitemap.xml maybe should be like so, including .json and .cshtml files that contain data that I want indexed, IOW data that would be included in people's search strings:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
-<urlset xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 
http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>http://www.awardwinnersonly.com</loc>
<lastmod>2013-09-16</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.awardwinnersonly.com/getHugos.cshtml</loc>
<lastmod>2013-09-16</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>.7</priority>
<loc>http://www.awardwinnersonly.com/Content/pulitzers2.json</loc>
<lastmod>2013-09-16</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>.7</priority>
<loc>http://www.awardwinnersonly.com/Content/nba.json</loc>
<lastmod>2013-09-16</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>.7</priority>
. . .
<loc>http://www.awardwinnersonly.com/Content/goldenglobes.json</loc>
<lastmod>2013-09-16</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>.7</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

However, I am open to constructive criticism / an attitude adjustment regarding what is good and not good to place in a sitemap.xml.

UPDATE 2

So, based on DisgruntledGoat's comment "That's not kludgy or amateurish, most web sites work like that...", I wonder if my best bet, SEO and performance-wise, would be to change my code like so:

$.getJSON('Content/noba.json', function (data) {
            $.each(data, function (i, dataPoint) {
    . . .

$.getJSON('getHugos.cshtml', function (data) {
            $.each(data, function (i, dataPoint) {
    . . .

...to storing the html in .htm files and then doing this:

$('#booksContent').Load('nobaScreenful.htm');
$('#booksContent').Load('noba.htm');

...by loading just a screenful first, it would be snappy; then replacing that screenful with the "whole enchilada" might take place without the user even noticing anything. Now I've got The Cream's "That screen, that screen, that screen-ful" playing in my head).

Would adding "noba.htm" (and all the other htm files) to my Sitemap cause that html to be parsed, indexed, and its contents included in search results? I assume the robots/spiders are smart enough to ignore html tags and concentrate on the content within them...

2
  • good question. Do you load pages from the .json files into your one and only page? If so, is there a way for you to include those pages in a url? such as yourmainpage.cshtml?page=somepagefromjson - if so, then you could construct a list of such links for your sitemap...
    – lukeocom
    Sep 18, 2013 at 3:54
  • I dynamically change what's on the page based on which tab the user selects (books, movies, or music), and then based on which selection they make from the combobox (e.g., when they select books, either pulitzers, nba, noba, nbcc, or hugos (so far)). The data used to dynamically build the html comes from those json files and the cshtml file. Sep 18, 2013 at 3:58

1 Answer 1

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First up, you definitely shouldn't put JSON files is a sitemap as they are meaningless to a search engine, which wants web pages. It wouldn't make sense for a user to land on your /Content/goldenglobes.json file.

So if the site stays exactly as it is, then a sitemap provides zero benefit.

However, if you are loading in content with JavaScript you may wish to look at Crawlable JavaScript, which would allow your separate blocks on content to appear on URLs differing by the 'anchor' (the stuff after #). In this case you would benefit from a sitemap with URLs like example.com/#!page=goldenglobes

3
  • I realize you answer is great, but I'm beginning to think I should have gone the kludgy, "amateurish" route and just stored the fully formed html in .htm files, rather than dynamically building them as-needed (it would seem to make this SEO business a lot easier). Sep 18, 2013 at 15:53
  • 3
    That's not kludgy or amateurish, most web sites work like that. There are arguments it's faster as browsers are optimised for that rather than first loading JavaScript, then executing it, then rendering the new content. Sep 18, 2013 at 18:08
  • Please see Update 2. Sep 18, 2013 at 18:57

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