Index.htm Page in XML Sitemap

[paulypal]

Hello all,

I've read on various resources that it is a good idea, for SEO
purposes, to have internal links point to our main domain www.mydomain.com
rather than www.mydomain.com/index.htm because it may take away some
of the Google Pagerank.

My question is should I only include "www.mydomain.com" in our XML
sitemap or should I also include the "www.mydomain.com/index.htm" page
to?

Thanks,
Paul

[Vision Jinx (Guru)]

Hi,

This is one of those questions where if you ask 10 people you will
probably get 10 different answers. Plus, I am sure your IT folks will
have a different opinion over your web developers also.

In the IT field for server optimization, they will most likely say to
always include a /index.htm /index.php etc at the end of your
directory urls as this helps with server performance by helping with
content negotiation and performance tuning.


Negotiation

If at all possible, avoid content-negotiation if you're really
interested in every last ounce of performance. In practice the
benefits of negotiation outweigh the performance penalties. There's
one case where you can speed up the server. Instead of using a
wildcard such as:

DirectoryIndex index

Use a complete list of options:

DirectoryIndex index.cgi index.pl index.shtml index.html

where you list the most common choice first.

Also note that explicitly creating a type-map file provides better
performance than using MultiViews, as the necessary information can be
determined by reading this single file, rather than having to scan the
directory for files.

Source: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/misc/perf-tuning.html#negotiation


Where a webmaster and SEO may say to not include it due to SEO and
page rank etc.

While the latter may have been the case in the old days, I believe (or
would like to believe) most competent search engine developers know
about directory and index files and should have some code logic for
this and I would like to think that with Google they are well aware of
this also, so in practice it really should make no different if a link
is followed by directory url or file path. (eg domain.com/ over
domain.com/index.htm)

(Even in Google analytics they have a feature for this also)

For the sitemap xml I would just suggest not using index.* and allow
your server to just use content negotiation assuming your server is
set up for it and your IT folks are not nit picking over every last
clock cycle. (I have worked as a Data Center Tech, IT Admin, Web
Designer and Developer so understand all views of this argument)

For the purpose of your question though, I would just go with
http://www.mydomain.com/

Remember to include the protocol (http://) and also the trailing slash
(/) in your sitemap and this is what they use in their sample docs
also.

You should always include a trailing slash for directories as your
server will probably need to send a redirect if its missing.

"A "trailing slash" redirect is issued when the server receives a
request for a URL http://servername/foo/dirname where dirname is a
directory."
Source: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_dir.html


Alternatively, you can also maybe just use a sitemap generator instead

http://code.google.com/p/sitemap-generators/


Also, if you want another opinion on Googles sitemap logic you can
also post your question in their forum too

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters

Hope that helps :)

Cheers!
Vision Jinx

On Apr 23, 8:42 pm, paulypal <paul.winfi...@human-network.net> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've read on various resources that it is a good idea, for SEO
> purposes, to have internal links point to our main domainwww.mydomain.com

> rather thanwww.mydomain.com/index.htmbecause it may take away some