One of the biggest buzzwords in web design and online marketing industries lately is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Thought by many to be a magic formula that will take your site straight to the top of Google search results, SEO actually involves a number of factors that can help boost your website rankings. Today I will address one tool that can help optimize your website for search engines: a sitemap.
A sitemap, which can be either an HTML or an XML page, is literally just a map of your website. The way the sitemap works is once you submit it to a search engine it tells them about the content, how many pages and where all the information of your website is located. The search engines “crawl” your site to catalog your content and the sitemap directs them in doing so.
An HTML sitemap helps human users navigate a website and quickly find material within the site’s content. This is especially useful for websites with a large amount of content, but many small to medium websites provide sitemaps as well. The HTML sitemap can look just like the other pages of your site and is often linked to in the footer of a website.This version of the sitemap has little to do with SEO, but is a nice feature for your website viewers.
An XML sitemap is written for search engine robots, which crawl the sitemap to ensure proper indexing of all of the site’s content. An XML page is not styled for human web viewers, it is strictly code. Although search engines crawl all known websites automatically, submitting a sitemap ensures that they crawl your site promptly and in entirety, and then enter it into their database. XML sitemaps should be submitted to individual search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. In addition to submitting a sitemap it is also beneficial to submit (or re-submit) your site to the major search engines after making significant changes. Search engines only crawl sites for changes every so often, so submitting a site lets them know to crawl it immediately to index any new information. The more a search engine knows about your site, the better their ability to accurately match it to people’s search results.
GetCreative offers sitemaps and other SEO tactics to all of our clients. By using best practices and exhausting all of your resources, you can gradually raise your site to its proper place in search engine results.
I always enjoy sifting through your articles. I have been reading through this site when I remember to check. Thanks for the effort you put into this. Cheers!
Just wondering, what do you think of the future of this search industry? I have been dealing with a number of tough problems in my company, but always wondering to listen to other ideas.