Using Sitemaps for Search Engine Optimization

Building HTML and XML sitemaps for your website could possibly be the easiest thing that you do to increase your web presence. It may be the first thing that gets you high search engine optimization (SEO) rankings.

For people who normally do not spend a great deal of time on SEO of their website, this is an excellent place to start. When you submit your sitemap to different search engines, you are stating that you exist and showing which pages your website has to offer the World Wide Web.

A sitemap is a list of website pages that are accessible to search engine crawlers (or scanners). It can be either in the form of a document that is used as a planning tool for web design or a web page that lists the pages on a website, which is usually arranged in a hierarchical manner. This helps the website visitors and the search engine robots to find pages on the website.

The two types of sitemaps are HTML and XML. An HTML sitemap offers a valuable directory of all of the pages that are in your website. XML sitemaps help the search engines to crawl (or scan) the pages of your website.

Sitemaps can improve SEO of a website by ensuring that all pages can be found. This is especially important if a site uses Adobe Flash or JavaScript menus, which don’t include HTML links. They also act as a navigation aid by giving an overview of a website’s content at a quick glance.

Most search engines will only follow a finite amount of links from a page, so if the amount of links is very large, the sitemap may be needed so that the search engines and visitors can access all content on the website.

We will now discuss the benefits of creating both an HTML and XML sitemap as well as how you can create them using a sitemap generator.

HTML Sitemaps

An HTML sitemap is a single HTML page that contains links to all of your website pages. Usually, you can access this through a link in the footer of your site, where it will appear on every page. If a site is very large, it can be difficult to find the page that you are looking for. If the HTML page is very well organized, the visitors to your site will be able to use it to find the page that they are looking for without too much difficulty.

From the perspective of SEO, as the search engine’s robot (or spider) crawls your site indexing pages, it might have an easier time finding various pages using the HTML sitemap instead of having to go through general navigation. Thus, sitemaps can benefit your website’s visitors and can help your website to gain increased Internet exposure.

XML Sitemaps

HTML sitemaps are designed with the intention of benefitting your human website visitors. XML sitemaps, on the other hand, are designed specifically for search engines. All of the most popular websites, including Google, Yahoo and Ask.com, use XML sitemaps as a part of their process for indexing website pages.

An effective XML sitemap will tell the search engine which pages are contained in your site, how frequently those pages are being updated and exactly when they were last modified. This helps the search engines to know which pages to revisit on a regular basis and thus do a more effective job of indexing those pages.

Creating both HTML and XML sitemaps

It is as simple to create an HTML sitemap as it is to create an HTML page that contains links to each page on your website. You should use a sitemap generator (there are many good ones out there) to help you automate this.

How often should your sitemap be submitted?

You should get into the habit of submitting to your sitemap to search engines a number of times a year. This will allow you to update the search engine on any new pages in your site. If you create new pages on a regular basis, you may want to submit your sitemap more frequently.

Conclusion

HTML and XML sitemaps are an excellent step in the direction of improving your website’s Internet exposure. You will probably find that your search engine rankings climb after you have submitted your sitemap for the first time. However, you should remember that this is only a part of SEO. There is a great deal more that you can do to increase the search engine rankings of your website pages and your website’s discoverability.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.