Sitemaps 101 -Back To SEO School

Sitemaps 101 -Back To SEO School

by:
Niall Roche

Sitemaps are without
doubt one of the most often ignored and undervalued aspects of
search engine optimization. You've probably spent a huge amount
of time working on pages of original content, keyword density
and getting incoming links but never once spared a thought for
a sitemap for your new creation.

What is a sitemap?
Put simply it's a page or pages that contain a list of and link
to all the other documents on your site. This is useful on two
levels:

1. Your visitor can quickly reference all the documents on your
site to find exactly what they're looking for.

2. Search engine spiders can also quickly find and index every
single page of your site in the least amount of time. The SEO
benefits of using a sitemap far considerable and should not be
ignored.

This is a win-win situation for you, your website visitors and
the search engines. Put simply you're nuts if you've not included
a sitemap as part of your overall website promotion strategy.

The good news is that it's never too late to start. You can create
a sitemap page today but there are some rules to creating an effective
sitemap that you need to follow:

Your sitemap must only be linked to from your homepage and no
other page. Why? You want the search engine spiders to find this
link directly from your homepage and follow it from there. Your
sitemap MUST NOT be linked to from every other page of your site.
Also from a Google Pagerank point of view only linking to your
sitemap from your homepage can also "funnel" PR quickly to pages
all over your site.

If you have a large website of 50 pages or more limit the number
of pages listed on your sitemap to a maximum of 30. This is to
prevent your sitemap from being misinterpreted as a link farm
by the search engines. It also makes the sitemap a lot easier
for real human visitors to read through. Limiting the number of
pages listed on each sitemap to 30 might mean splitting your sitemap
over 5, 10 or 20 pages. This has to be done and the long term
benefits are worth it. Bear in mind that if you do create a 20
page sitemap you've just created an extra 20 pages of content
for your website!

Make absolutely sure that each of your sitemap pages links to
the next. If you have 10 sitemap pages in total then each of those
needs to link to every other sitemap page. Otherwise both visitors
and search engine spiders will find a broken link, lose interest
and go away.

Test your sitemap thoroughly. Make sure all the links works. Make
sure it's easy to read and navigate through. Your sitemap is there
to assist your visitor and not confuse them.

How should you structure your sitemap? The following tips must
be adhered to in order for your site to gain the maximum possible
benefit from having a sitemap.

1. The title of each sitemap link should be keyword rich and link
directly back to the original page.

2. Include 10 - 20 words of text from the original page of content
underneath the relevant sitemap link. This creates more content
for search engine spiders and human visitors can see exactly what
each page is about in advance of clicking.
uman visitor benefit is that they can see what the pages is about
in advance.

3. Ensure that the look and feel of your sitemap page is consistent
with the rest of your site. Use the same basic HTML template you
used for every other page of your site.

So now you understand the importance of building a sitemap for
your website. There is work involved but the long term benefits
for your websites far outweigh any effort you have to make right
now.

About the author:
This article was provided courtesy of Search-Engine-Fuel.com where
you'll find tons of information on search engine optimization.
Check out our page on SEO sitemaps


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