search-engine-optimization-sitemap

Sitemap’s are a GPS for Search Engines and Visitors

Although many online marketing experts differ slightly about the need for sitemaps in the modern Google world, they have proven to get your pages indexed faster with better hierarchy.

So what is a site map (sitemap)? According to Wikipedia a site map is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.

There are two basic types of sitemaps to use, XML and HTML. An XML sitemap, as described by http://sitemaps.org/index.php, sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

An html sitemap is a more visitor friendly site map or directory of pages and hierarchy that is placed directly on your site.

Check out this recommended FAQ on sitemaps for additional information. http://sitemaps.org/faq.php

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