SEO Optimization, onsite Factors

SEO Optimization, Onsite Factors - By: Chelle G


Having a sitemap on your site may not be a high priority for you, but the benefits greatly outweigh the small amount of time it takes to create and upload a sitemap to your site. Today we are going to take a look at sitemaps, their value and how to get one for your site.

There are two basic types of sitemaps, HTML and XML.

HTML sitemaps have been around for a long time, these are viewable by visitors to your site (should they choose to go to your site map), and usually you will link to these sitemaps from your homepage, oftentimes in the footer of the homepage.

HTML sitemaps basically list and link to every other page on your site. They can be organized into groupings based on the page topic, and can help visitors navigate your site when looking for something in particular. This is especially true if you have a large site with many pages.

XML sitemaps, on the other-hand, are not made for your visitors, but for the search engines. Most of the major search engines (including Google) recognize XML sitemaps. These XML sitemaps tell the search engine what pages are in your site, how important they are relative to each-other and even how often they are updated.

This information allows the search engines to better index your site. All of your pages are presented to the search engine in the XML sitemap, so the search engine will be aware of them all. In addition, it helps the search engine decide which pages it should crawl more often.

If you are using Google\'s webmaster tools, you can tell Google where your XML sitemap is located and \"ask\" them to visit that location. This is a sound practice, and you should take the time to update your sitemaps, both HTML and XML, each time you update your website.

If you are not familiar with creating sitemaps, there are a number of websites out there that will crawl and create sitemaps for you. A simple search on Google for free xml site map software, makers, creators, etc. should turn up a free service or two that will create these sitemaps automatically. This is a completely free service, and only takes a minute or two to create sitemaps that you can then download and add to your website.

In addition, you can create both HTML and XML sitemaps using their service, generally speaking (many also allow you to create ROR and Text sitemaps should you choose to).

If you do not have both an HTML and an XML sitemap for your site, I suggest taking five minutes and creating them now. It will benefit your site in the long run, and once you see how easy it can be to create these sitemaps, you will feel more comfortable creating new sitemaps as you add or change content on your site.

Creating and maintaining a sitemap is a very easy and basic building block to successfully optimizing your web site for the search engines. In less than five minutes, you can have a site map created and uploaded to your site. It’s quick and easy, get going!

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