Sitemaps & SEO

Creating a site map for your website is a very important aspect of on-site search engine optimization, by helping website crawlers (otherwise known as ’spiders”) discover your website pages, inner pages and navigation menu by following your sitemap through its inner structure.

A site map is basically a table of contents for your website, describing the different pages available and the content/topics discussed within your different sections.

A site map makes it easier for both the public to navigate through your site but also for effectively indexing your site within the search engines.

You can create a very simple site map or design a complex structured map, it’s entirely up to you.  Regardless what you decide to go with however be sure that you always use plain text links as search engine spiders have a difficult time reading Javascript.

You should also consider adding a text link on the front page of your website as well, enabling both visitors and spiders to easily locate it.

Using anchor text links will also help you when it comes to search engine optimization, and adding descriptive content rather than just a page of links will also boost your ranking.

You should also organize your site map into categories, remembering that this table of contents will be viewed by your visitors and not just search engine spiders, so focus on making sure it’s comprehensive and easy for your guests to understand and utilize effectively.

Create a Sitemap for your site:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/