Ive been looking at improving my search engine rankings. After lots of reading I’ve discovered one of the best ways to do this is to set up a site map on your blog.
Do I need a site map ?
You may have heard people talking about site maps and be wondering if your website needs such a thing. This article discusses sitemaps and their uses.
What is a sitemap ?
A sitemap contains links to all of the pages on your website. For example my SiteMap contains links to all the major pages on our site.
Do I need a site map ?
This question is easy to answer, if you only have a small number of pages that are all linked from your home page or main navigation section then the answer is no.
All other websites should really have a sitemap, preferably linked to from their home page or navigation menu.
What use is a site map?
There are three main reasons for having a site map, the first and most important is the famed “3 click rule” that says that a good website design will allow a visitor to get from any page to any other page in 3 clicks or less. Think about it, you are on any page of your website, click on the site map (click 1) and then on the page you want to get to (click 2).
The second reason is if you use Java or Javascript for your navigation. Not every visitor will be able to use such navigation and even some search engines will never get past the first page. Having a site map allows you to put a hardcoded link on the page header/footer/navigation and lets people use the sitemap to find their way around your website.
The third reason that it helps the search engines find all the pages on your website much quicker - especially the page that is buried away with a link from a single page somewhere on your site.
How do I build a site map?
Depending on the size of your site it can be as easy as making a note of all the pages on the site and then creating a page with links to all of these pages on (preferably sorted into logical groups, for example all articles are put together in one section of the site map and all news items are in a seperate section.
Of course, if your website is getting large you might want to automate the building of the page, there are many tools available on the internet to allow you to build a site map and it’s just a matter of trying some until you find one that you like. A search on any of the major search engines will bring up plenty of choice.
What about the Google Sitemap scheme that I’ve read about ?
The Google sitemap project is planed to be an easy way for you to help improve your coverage in the Google index. The idea is that you create a special file (preferably in XML format) that the Google spider reads and a way of keeping them informed of all your web pages, and when you make changes to these pages.
Google claim that by using Google Sitemaps you get a better crawl coverage to help people find more of your web pages with fresher search results.
This article is ©2005 : John K Mitchell, more of John’s articles can be found at http://www.forestsoftware.co.uk
If you’re using WordPress like me. Heres a couple of links to some SiteMap tools.
Google SiteMap Tool
SiteMap Generator
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February 27th, 2008 at 3:55 am
I needed this article because I did not understand how the sitemap worked Iam still not clear on how to make one.
February 27th, 2008 at 6:55 am
I can help you if you like. Send me an email.