Search Engine Optimization

Sitemaps show the Search Engine Spiders Where Your Pages Are

Search engines, especially Google, love to have a site map through which they can quickly and easily access your site's pages for indexing - take advantage of this! When creating a site map for your web site, be sure to put it at the root level (not within any subfolders or directories), link to it from your home page, and name it site_map.html (or .htm, whichever extension you are using for your site). Use standard navigation on the site map, meaning create the page as though it is another page on your site, so include your standard navigation menus at the left, bottom, etc.

Simply create a list of links (similar to an outline format) that shows how the pages of your site are linked to from each upper tier page, and name these links using keyword-rich, but relevant, text links (basically, you don't want to name the link to your bird house page Bird Food and Bird Houses. Add a small paragraph about your company, or about your product line, at the top of the page. Keep the site map page simple, using no graphics (or very few if necessary, perhaps your company logo). And when submitting your site's pages to the major engines, be sure to submit the site map page as well as your home page.