Site Map?

What is a sitemap and why does anyone need one? Life is simple with a map. The thing is that we need maps to know how to find places we have never been, the same concept stand for search engines and websites. Search engines have little bots that crawl the webs looking for new sites, scanning then and ranking them. The job is made considerably easier and the ranking results are significantly better if one registers the website with the search engine.

When registering one of the essentials is to upload a site map, this helps the search engine know how many pages your site has, knows how to navigate it, and this in turn makes it cover your site more thoroughly. It’s basically a file that tells the search engines exactly what files your site has.

There are two types of maps, HTML and XML. The former being a single page that has links on it to all the pages of the site, while the latter, is used by search engine crawlers to find out what pages are present, the major difference is in the fact that one is to be view more by users and the other is to be used as a tool by a program. So an XML Sitemap file wont look that pretty to a user.

Its Simple, so do it.

Sitemaps are easy to create, and there are several hundred different programs that do essentially the same thing. Google has a sitemap generator, it would make sense to most that one of the most prominent search engine and online companies in the world would make one user friendly enough for anyone to use, and effective enough for their own search engine to recognise.

There are of course other sitemap generator, that all have their own little differences, maybe one interface is easier to use then another, but at the end of the day it’s a simple aspect of any SEO and time should not be overly wasted on such tasks, so in this case simplicity will certainly be good enough. When in doubt follow the big cheese, and in this case Google is it.

It is the essential start.

How this helps SEO is simple really, if you have designed your site to maximise your search engine rankings, wouldn’t you want to show the search engine your site, rather then wait for it to stumble on it through the trillion websites on the web? This is the easiest and quickest way of getting the search engines to start ranking your website. It’s a simple task and should not be ignored. The benefit of a site map also helps you see how your site is set up, how effective the structure has been and whether or not it is easy to navigate and interpret both for users and search bots.

Sitemaps help navigate, they are simple to create, and essential to maximising search position results. There is very little else that can be said.

Get Involved