Unknown Benefits of a Sitemap
First, what is a sitemap? A sitemap is a way to let search engines like Google and Yahoo know the pages that are on your website. Now, you might say, I thought Google was supposed to send GoogleBot out to find out about all of the pages on my site, why do I need this sitemap? Well, GoogleBot will still visit your website but it may miss pages. Creating a sitemap can allow Google to quickly and easily add more of your web pages to their index. And the more pages we have in the index, the greater odds that we have to enable users to find us on both traditional searches and Long Tail searches. Google provides some good documentation in the Webmaster helpabout creating sitemaps and using their free webmaster tools.
So, what does this sitemap look like? Before we show an example of a sitemap, I do want to mention that we will be providing resources that can create the sitemap for you. Sitemaps are based off of XML (extensible markup language) so they are light weight and can easily document 100’s or even thousands of pages on a website. This sitemap was generated by using the FREE Google Sitemap Generator plug-in to Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
As you can see you could type your own sitemap if you wanted to. Each node in the Sitemap just identifies the page location, the last modified date, and the priority that the page is in relation to your website. Before you eyes roll over and you click away from this post, let’s make it even easier.If you aren’t using a program like Dreamweaver, and you want to create a sitemap, here is a FREE tool out there that can help!
- www.xml-sitemaps.com – Just input the address of your website and it will allow you to download your new XML file. Just upload to Google Webmaster Toolsand you are ready to go!
In addition to creating an XML sitemap you can also help visitors to your website to find more pages on your site by creating a “sitemap” page. This can be a simple page that identifies the pages on your website.Google advises not to create a page that has more than 100 links so if you have more than 100 pages, break it up into multiple pages.The page doesn’t have to look fancy, take a look at our page that we created for OnlineRealEstateSuccess.This simple page can also allow Google and Yahoo to find more pages if you haven’t had time to put up your XML sitemap.
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July 13th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
I read similar article also named Benefits of a Sitemap | Internet Real Estate Success, and it was completely different. Personally, I agree with you more, because this article makes a little bit more sense for me
September 19th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
[...] a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger [...]
September 24th, 2008 at 9:02 am
[...] your Sitemap - We have written about sitemaps before, but they are one of the best ways you can let the search engines know about all of the pages [...]
October 9th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Hmmm, I might be a little green but that “FREE” tool isn’t exactly free. It gives you a sight map in HTML formate but google wants a link from your website which xml-sitmaps provides at a fee of $10 and only once you’re a member which is $19.99. Am I doing something wrong? Or is there a way around this fee?
October 16th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Alida,
There is a paid version of the tool, but it really is FREE. Once you input your web address and tell it to “Generate Sitemap” it gives you a few options.
One of the options is to download the XML file (which I usually choose) and then you can upload that file on your own. Just choose the option that says “Download un-compressed XML Sitemap” and you can download the file.
I hope helps.