SEO Tips: How to Use a Sitemap to Boost Your Website's SEO

depotgang · 01-12-2012, 03:10 PM

You spend a lot of time creating fresh content and managing your website or blog, but did you know that by overlooking a very basic step you could be losing out on organic search engine traffic? Yes, you heard that right. SEO does not have to be overly complicated. While the majority of your site’s page rank will be determined by off-page factors such as the number of high quality backlinks to your site, on-page SEO should not be forgotten.

Doing something as simple as creating a sitemap is like putting out a welcome mat to the search engine spiders. Having a sitemap makes it easier for the spiders to crawl your site, find out what you have to offer and send traffic to the proper pages. Let’s take a look at how easy it is to create a sitemap.

What is a sitemap?
A sitemap is basically just a page that contains a list of all of the pages on your website along with links to those pages.

Sitemaps are a helpful tool for your human visitors who will be able to quickly spot the page they need and go to it.

How does a sitemap help improve my site’s SEO?
Sitemaps makes the job of the search engines easier when they stop by to index your pages. Using a sitemap ensures that the search engines visit all of the pages on your site. This helps your website and its content get found more quickly and easily by your target audience.

How do I create a sitemap for my website?
If you have a small website (5 or fewer pages) you can quickly create a sitemap by hand.

Use the same page template for your sitemap that you are using for the other pages on your site.

Link titles on your sitemap should contain keyword anchor text.

Below each page link, include 20 or so words of text from that page, to give some context for both search engines and human visitors.

Link to your sitemap from your website's home page so that the search engine spiders can find it and go from there to crawl all of the pages that you want them to crawl.

If you have a website with too many pages to create a sitemap by hand for, there are some free software solutions that you can try. If you’re running a WordPress blog, there’s a handy plugin that will create a sitemap for you.

Google XML Sitemaps
The description says, "This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog." One cool thing about this plugin is that it also notifies the major search engines every time you create new pages.

Xml-sitemaps.com
For those who are not using WordPress blogs, this free, XML sitemap generator build an XML sitemap that can be submitted to the major search engines, a text version containing a list of all of your pages, and an HTML version so that your human visitor can find what they are looking for on your site quickly and easily.

Having a valid sitemap is a win-win. You make both your human visitors and your search engine spider visitors happy and coming back to your site, which is always a good thing.

For more SEO tips and strategies for building and growing your online business, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today.

01-12-2012, 03:10 PM	#1
depotgang Laser Traffic Pro War Room Member Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: San Diego, Ca , USA. Posts: 1,253 Thanks: 12 Thanked 154 Times in 69 Posts Contact Info	SEO Tips: How to Use a Sitemap to Boost Your Website's SEO You spend a lot of time creating fresh content and managing your website or blog, but did you know that by overlooking a very basic step you could be losing out on organic search engine traffic? Yes, you heard that right. SEO does not have to be overly complicated. While the majority of your site’s page rank will be determined by off-page factors such as the number of high quality backlinks to your site, on-page SEO should not be forgotten. Doing something as simple as creating a sitemap is like putting out a welcome mat to the search engine spiders. Having a sitemap makes it easier for the spiders to crawl your site, find out what you have to offer and send traffic to the proper pages. Let’s take a look at how easy it is to create a sitemap. What is a sitemap? A sitemap is basically just a page that contains a list of all of the pages on your website along with links to those pages. Sitemaps are a helpful tool for your human visitors who will be able to quickly spot the page they need and go to it. How does a sitemap help improve my site’s SEO? Sitemaps makes the job of the search engines easier when they stop by to index your pages. Using a sitemap ensures that the search engines visit all of the pages on your site. This helps your website and its content get found more quickly and easily by your target audience. How do I create a sitemap for my website? If you have a small website (5 or fewer pages) you can quickly create a sitemap by hand. Use the same page template for your sitemap that you are using for the other pages on your site. Link titles on your sitemap should contain keyword anchor text. Below each page link, include 20 or so words of text from that page, to give some context for both search engines and human visitors. Link to your sitemap from your website's home page so that the search engine spiders can find it and go from there to crawl all of the pages that you want them to crawl. If you have a website with too many pages to create a sitemap by hand for, there are some free software solutions that you can try. If you’re running a WordPress blog, there’s a handy plugin that will create a sitemap for you. Google XML Sitemaps The description says, "This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog." One cool thing about this plugin is that it also notifies the major search engines every time you create new pages. Xml-sitemaps.com For those who are not using WordPress blogs, this free, XML sitemap generator build an XML sitemap that can be submitted to the major search engines, a text version containing a list of all of your pages, and an HTML version so that your human visitor can find what they are looking for on your site quickly and easily. Having a valid sitemap is a win-win. You make both your human visitors and your search engine spider visitors happy and coming back to your site, which is always a good thing. For more SEO tips and strategies for building and growing your online business, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today.
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