Skip to main content

How to create a google site map

A quick search on Google for advice on creating a site map initially threw up many links to software you could buy or download for free to create a site map.

 

But why do you need a site map? 

Basically as websites get larger and more complex both the human browser and the search engine spiders need an easy to follow map to find all the pages within your site. A site map gives them a simple navigational tool.

 

Site maps have 3 main benefits:

1) A site map allows visitors to easily find what they are looking for by simply visiting your site map and clicking on the link to go directly to the page they want to visit.

2) Often technologies employed to assist in reading webpages such as web page readers and screen readers can only follow text links. For practical reasons it may not always be possible to show a text link to every other page within your site on your main page and other pages within your website and so use a site map.

3) Search engine spiders like text and text links. If they cannot follow a text link to a page of your site it may not get indexed. Make it easy for the spider to index all your pages through a site map.

A site map consists of the two things search engines love - text and keywords. To build a good site map combines relevant keywords with a hypertext links. For example on your site map you may have a link to your webpage about website promotion so your hyperlink should contains the words 'website promotion' and link directly to that page within your site.

A site map does not need and indeed should not be fancy, but should be clear and easy to navigate.

 

Here are some tips for a good site map:

1. Place a prominent link to your site map on every page and label it SITE MAP.

2. It should show all your webpages through different levels as basic text links.

3. Use standard colors for links and visited links.

4. It should show a quick, easy to follow over view of the site without the need to scroll around in the web browser.

Google started allowing people to submit site maps to their account as a way of letting google know about all your webpages and updates to your site. It does not increase your page ranking at all but is worth taking the time to set up properly.

 

You can find free software for creating site maps at:

mysitemapgenerator.com

bloggersitemapgenerator.com

And when you are done, don't forget to tell Google about your site map so they can crawl and hopefully index all the pages of your site.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url

A well planned site map can ensure your Web site is fully indexed by search engines.

 

 

 

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10 Tips For Raising Your Search Engine Rankings

  Search engine rankings are an important factor to consider when you have a website that needs more traffic. If your website doesn’t have a good position in the rankings then no-one will find it, so you need to make sure that your website is ranked highly enough to be seen. The other important quality to getting high traffic to your site is having a nice arsenal of links. The more links that you have to your site the more traffic you will get, but also, the more links to your site the more search engines like your site. Keeping a nice supply of links pointing at your site requires similar precautions and practices as getting high search engine listings.   Although no SEO company can guarantee a high ranking for your site, here are some tips for raising your search engine ranking. Using these tips will not get you to the top unless your site is the best out there, but they will at least put you into the positioning that you truly deserve. After all, the internet is basic...
Post a Comment
Read more

Article Submission as an important tool for Search Engine Optimization

In today's internet information age your online presence is not only sufficient to make profit. If you want to achieve online success your businesses need continuous promotion. Article submission refers to the submission of articles to the article directories to get hyperlinks from websites that want to publish your content. It makes your website content-rich as well as bringing backlinks for you. Article Submission can be used to catapult your website to higher rankings in the search engines. The most striking feature about article submission is free, simple, and easy for even a novice. One should need not to be an SEO expert for the article submission process. The process is so simple and least time consuming that any unprofessional can do it with negligible efforts. There are hundreds of articles directories publishing articles online and are either paid or free of cost. Online article submission sites are an interesting business model in this Internet Information Age to ach...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is SEO and why is it so important?

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimizing and refers to a set of good practices that teach you how to improve your website so that it would be easily tracked, indexed, and ranked by search engines. Getting your site indexed by Google and other major search engines will help you attract visitors and increase traffic.   It is the process of increasing the number of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.   SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.   Basic SEO Tips:   1. Insert keywords within the title tag ...
Post a Comment
Read more