Site Maps For Search Engine Optimization - Use Them by Hasaan Brown

Site Maps Are Simple But Effective

As a part of search engine optimization, it is very important to create a site map. Besides making it easier for your visitors to get around your web site, you make it easier for robots to crawl your page so you can be listed in search engines. My experience has shown that when a site map is not used, it is very likely your entire web site won't be crawled. In the past, I have had navigation on all my pages on my web site, but when I checked google or yahoo, not all my pages have shown up. Using a site map seems to prevent that from being a problem. Your site map does not need to be fancy. All you have to do is create a simple page and list every link in your web site. Here is an example of a site map. Also, make sure you make the site map a text link site map. Don't use images with links.

Google Sitemaps

Google now has a program called "Google Sitemaps" that helps your web site with google search engine indexing. Simply stated, this system allows you to keep google informed of when you make changes to your web pages.. Google claims that you will have better coverage when it crawls your web site, fresher search results, and a crawl that is smarter because you can offer information about your pages such as when a page was last modified and how often a page changes. It is fairly easy to setup. The simple approach is you create an XML document that you upload to your server, and in your google sitemap account, you tell google where the document is located. Google makes it quite easy to understand the process, including creating the XML document, so any webmaster or web developer should easily be able to implement google's sitemap feature.

To learn more, visit Google Sitemaps.