Importance Of Sitemaps

I teach and preach like Jesus – hope you do not put me on the cross. Thanks!

I am going to talk (or better preach and teach) to bloggers and webmasters who want to use search engines like Google to get traffic. It is called Search Engine Optimization.

Now sitemap on your website or blog is important for several reasons. However you should keep in mind that you need one. The sitemap lists all important pages of your website. You basically create a new page on your site, and place links to all important pages.

See example:
http://www.deletespyware-adware.com/
sitemap.html

Note: You do not have to add ALL your website pages on your sitemap. Only the most important pages. (pssssssttttt – Do not be stupid

Then place a link from the home page of your website to the sitemap page.

Spiders, which are software that search engines have; will visit your website once you have some links from other websites – like links from directories or article directories. These visit your website to check it out in other words. They will see your sitemap and it will be 10 times more easy for the spiders to check your site. More easy for them – better for you.

A sitemap enables these software called spiders to visit your most important pages on your website faster. The spiders also realize that you have a well structured website. That is important and they look out for that thing.

If you do not have a sitemap, spiders may get confused and leave your website. If they leave your website you will not get indexed fast. It will take longer or possible never at all.

So give the spiders a sitemap on your website. The sitemap is also very useful for your website visitors cause they can find hidden pages and navigate through your website much easier.

Now, that was chatting about a sitemap you place on your website. But that is not all. You have probably a lot more pages on your website that are let us say not important.

For example if you have a forum you cannot include all forum post pages on the sitemap. You cannot include everything on the sitemap otherwise it becomes a one long boring page filled with links and links… that no one will take care looking at.

A free software called GSiteCrawler that I personally use will help you create another type of sitemap. This sitemap will tell Google spiders, all about your other website pages that you did not list on your sitemap.

So you create a new sitemap using this free software that you can download from
gsitecrawler.com

Now the software creates a sitemap file that contains all your website links. You can exclude certain pages you do not want to list. All the pages that you do not want people to see just exclude them from the list. The software is easy to use. Please refer to the help files included in the software to understand how to use it.

Once the software creates your new sitemap. This is called the Google Sitemap. You will then submit this sitemap file to your Google webmaster account. If you do not have one you can get one free from:
www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/

Follow the instructions to create a free account and add your website. Then you add your sitemap file. You also need to verify that you are the real owner of the website you add. There are instructions on the site so check that out. If you have problems drop me a comment and I will reply. You can also contact me using the contact me link on the right hand side of this blog.

Now the software Gsitecrawler will create your sitemap.

This sitemap is very useful cause now all your website pages will get indexed in search engines faster. Indexed means – that when you visit google.com and search for a page it will be included in the search results.

Gsitecrawler also create a sitemap for other search engines such as Yahoo.

In the case of Yahoo the sitemap you create to submit to Yahoo is a text file that contains all your website links one under the other. The software will create that for you too – free. Then you submit the text file to Yahoo. Instructions are within Gsitecrawler software.

Let me recap maybe this will wake you up; after that long GOSPEL:

You need to create a sitemap with your most important pages – and place it on your website. This is both for spiders and your site visitors.

Then create a sitemap for Google using Gsitecrawler software. With same software also create a Yahoo Sitemap for Yahoo search engine.

I do not submit anything for other search engines like MSN, AOL. Only Google and Yahoo!

Only update the sitemaps when you add new pages to your website.

Special Note: Do not email me if you are afraid of spiders. The ANSWER is NO – I do not have any spiders on my blog.

Importance Of Sitemaps

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 at 12:16 PM and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response and/or trackback from your own site.