SEO Tips – Why is Your Sitemap Important?
Bill Egan asked:
A site map is a separate HTML page that acts as a directory of the pages on your website. Each page listed in the site map is hyperlinked.
Having a good sitemap on your website is a very good idea for two reasons:
Its good for visitors who are lost, if they can find the site easily they can quickly navigate around the website
The search engines will naturally index your sitemap, so its a great place to put all you important internal links so that they get picked up and indexed appropriately.
Apart from having no sitemap, the biggest mistake that website owners make when it comes to having a useful site map is that they just list the pages on the website.
You’ve seen it before, its just along list of bullet points with links to some of the pages on the website.
Having a good sitemap can really help with both your ‘organic’ rankings and your visitor satisfaction.
Some Tips:
Use keywords that are relevant Use them in and around the link Create a short relevant paragraph describing the page beside the link Keywords embedded in the paragraph text to enhance relevancy for the search engines and visitors alike Make the link to your site map obvious and place it on every page in your site. Call it a sitemap, everyone understands that.
Here are some sample sitemaps to give you an idea what to aim for:
http://www.bmwusa.com/Standard/Content/SiteMap.aspx
http://boston.citysearch.com/site_guide
Free Marketing and SEO Resources
A site map is a separate HTML page that acts as a directory of the pages on your website. Each page listed in the site map is hyperlinked.
Having a good sitemap on your website is a very good idea for two reasons:
Its good for visitors who are lost, if they can find the site easily they can quickly navigate around the website
The search engines will naturally index your sitemap, so its a great place to put all you important internal links so that they get picked up and indexed appropriately.
Apart from having no sitemap, the biggest mistake that website owners make when it comes to having a useful site map is that they just list the pages on the website.
You’ve seen it before, its just along list of bullet points with links to some of the pages on the website.
Having a good sitemap can really help with both your ‘organic’ rankings and your visitor satisfaction.
Some Tips:
Use keywords that are relevant Use them in and around the link Create a short relevant paragraph describing the page beside the link Keywords embedded in the paragraph text to enhance relevancy for the search engines and visitors alike Make the link to your site map obvious and place it on every page in your site. Call it a sitemap, everyone understands that.
Here are some sample sitemaps to give you an idea what to aim for:
http://www.bmwusa.com/Standard/Content/SiteMap.aspx
http://boston.citysearch.com/site_guide
Free Marketing and SEO Resources
