A part of search engine optimisation is to generate sitemap for your website. A sitemap shows the structure of your website and makes it user friendly, and will help the spiders index your site. There are two types of sitemaps that you will need, one for visitors and the other is for the search engines.
One of the advantages of having a sitemap, is when visitors come to your site they can navigate your site easily. The sitemap will show a list of the pages and posts, the posts will be listed under their relevant categories.
XML Sitemap
The XML Sitemap is a way of communicating with the search engines. The search engines have software robots called spiders, these spiders crawl the internet gathering information. Spiders crawl by following links, having a SEO Sitemap will give the spiders a better visibility of your site and a trail to follow. This will enable the spiders to crawl every page, post and URL of your site.
WordPress – Sitemap Plugins
If you are using the WordPress platform, there are a number of sitemap plugins that can be installed. The two I use are the Google XML Sitemaps and Dagon Design Sitemap Generator.
The Google XML Sitemaps is used by the search engines to crawl and rank your site. Installing this sitemap will ensure that the search engines will find all your posts and pages, and they will all be indexed and ranked. This sitemap also notifies the search engines of new posts and updates.
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator will help visitors navigate your site. The sitemap is a map of your site, which is similar to the contents page of a book. This sitemap is easy to install and is customisable.
Google Webmaster Tools
The Google Webmaster Tools is a powerful tool that shows you how Google sees your site. Once you have added your site, you can generate sitemap and then submit your Sitemap URL. Webmaster Tools enables you to view who links to your site, the number of links each of your posts have, internal links, plus more.
What about Bing and Yahoo?
Between them Bing and Yahoo have approximately 30% of the search engine market. It is well worth submitting your sitemap to both of these search engines.
Conclusion – Generate Sitemap
It is easy to generate sitemap and submit to the search engines. In my view, to maximise your search engine optimisation it is well worth submitting your XML sitemap to Google, Bing and Yahoo. By doing this, the spiders of the three main search engines are able to crawl your site, index all pages and posts and are notified of any updates. This will improve your sites ranking and increase the number of visitors, that come to your site.
Kerry, Learn to Blog The Easy Way
Fantastic, This has saved me a lot of time thanks. I was about to look for a plugin to generate sitemap for my readers and you have given me the answer. I have the xml sitemap for all of them but would like my readers to navigate my site easily.
Jackie Stenhouse recently posted..How to Add a Facebook Widget to Your Website
Hi Jackie
Glad I could help. If I go to a site and want to see what other topics are available a sitemap is so helpful. Not all topics are listed in the recent posts and not all sites have a search bar.
Such a great tool – the plugin for a sitemap! So easy to use and set up and creates a sitemap in minutes that looks great, and helps readers to find what they are looking for!
Cheers
Lisa
Lisa Wood recently posted..The Importance Of Link Building SEO
Hi Lisa
Yes the plugins are easy to install and makes navigating a site so easy.
G’day Kerry Lea,
What an informative post. Your explanation of the 2 types of sitemap was so straightforward and logical – I had them both installed and activated in 5-6 minutes. Very logical.
Bookmarked.
Cheers
Harry
Harry Lynn recently posted..Learning Piano – My Learning Journey Part Four
Thanks Harry, yes the sitemaps are easy to install and good for SEO.
This is the way of the future. Learning how to blog will give you both satisfaction and reward. The people that teach this are very good at their work.
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