SiteMaps

What is a Sitemap?
A sitemap is a dispay for the layout of your website. It is an aid to the search engines and to your visitors. Year ago they only consisted of a list of links, but now a sitemap is a descriptive roadmap of your site.

It is fleshed out with keyword details for each section and subsection to help your visitors enhance their touring experience. And the biggest benefit is that it gives the search engines more fodder!

To create a good sitemap.

Be sure that it is linked from your HOME page. this forces the search engine to find it right away, and then follow it all the way through your site. If you link it from other pages, and the spider finds a dead link, it will quit the search!

Small sites can place every page on their list, while larger sites should not because an never-ending list of links causes the search engine to think of you as a link farm. A good sitemap should have no more than 25 to 40 links. It also is easier on your visitors!

The title of each link should contain a keyword and link to the original page. Also write 10 to 25 words to tell what the page is about. This part contributes to your depth of content with the search engine.

If you have 15 pages on your site, then every page should be linked to every other page in the sitempa, and PLEASE make sure that all of your links work! When a person or a search engine find a broken link they both lose interest...FAST!

And just like you can't leave your website to fend for itself...don't neglect your sitemap. Keep it updated and current...Your visitors and the search engines will love you!

A good sitemap:
...gives a quick overview of your site
...gives a concise path for the search engines to follow
...gives a text link for every page of the site
...gives easy to follow paths for visitors
...gives a short description of each page
...uses important keyword phrases

Why is a SiteMap important?
Because it improves the value of your site by getting it indexed. This is your most important SEO (Search Engine Optimization) goal! A sitemap provides a one-stop shopping experience for the spiders, and it can also be invaluable to lost visitors!


If you wish to delve further, check out SEO Chat for great info on the subject.

A good place to start is with Google SiteMaps
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Google Spiders Everywhere

by Bonnie Calhoun

We've already discussed how to sign up for the search engines, including Google. See the post about Search Engines or click on the Label that I made for it.

Today I'm going to go through what it takes to make sure that your site is being crawled correctly by the spiders...LOL...That sounds cool, doesn't it?

One of the first things you need to be aware of is Google Blog Search Ping Service. You can ping your blog here to get Google to crawl it.

Then after you ping your blog, go and check for it to register on Google Blog Search. Now if it doesn't show up right away, don't worry!

Go sign yourself up with Google Alerts. When you sign up for this put the URL (address of your blog) in the top box, where it says search terms. The when your blog updates, you can tell how long it takes the spiders to crawl your blog, because Google will send you an email, every time you update!

Next thing...and I've addressed this in the Search Engine post is your site map. You can set this up with Google WebMaster Central. Now I can't say enogh good stuff about these tools on this site. You can set up your site map, you can find out if your site is being indexed by Google, a Help Center, and multiple other tools!

I gave you instructions before on how to setup your site map, but make sure that when your done you get the little (1) on the column that says site map. After you've set up your site map, check the crawl rate.

Click on the tool for setting up a site map. This will be the page where you get the little (1) under the site map column. Click on the title of your blog and it takes you to the Diagnostics page that tells you all about your crawl rate, the errors, and tools.

Your crawl rate should be set to normal because it will tell you that at the slower rate: "A slower crawl will reduce Googlebot's traffic on your server, but we may not be able to crawl your site as often."
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