Sitemap structure for local directory website (for search engine bots)

Question

I am working on a local listings website . I have to finalize the sitemap/link directory for the site to enable the search engine bots to crawl my site effectively (the end user is supposed to search using textboxes)

I have come with the following schema : Keywords(alphabetical order)=>City(Alphabetical Orders)=>Locality(in the city above , in alphabetical order)

Please note that at the three levels described above their are no actual profiles , just a bunch of more links , ex: keyword = xyz ; city = New York , Detroit , California , Minnesota Locality = localities list of city chosen above .

This can be culminated in two ways : 1) At the third level I provide a link to search results page (the same a end user would see) 2) I simple list links of listed entities in the sitemap itself along with relevant info( which would be additional content for the bot to determine the links relevance)

Also is there a penalty for increasing the levels (3) here , should I consider going with two ?

Note : The search results page (as seen by end user) has pagination employed with links , not ajax .

Answer 1

To finalize with your sitemap, you can put a link on your keywords, cities and localities also. It will help for the users to navigate your website very easily.

If you go with more increasing level with third stage then it will look like too many links on a single page. So, Google will ignore your page and it will not indexed. So, you will loose the chanse of SEO benefits.