Search engine optimization tip: create a sitemap and submit it to search engines.

Sunday, 28 February 2010 01:53

This is a medium priority SEO tip.

This search engine optimization tip is important for your website for the following reasons:

The sitemap is a gathering of all of your website's urls in a single place.

If you are asking yourself why should you create a sitemap of your website, the answer is very simple. Creating and submitting a sitemap to search engines is the fastest way for your website's pages to be indexed. Some urls of your site may be harder to reach by search engines. Letting search engines know about all of your pages, it's a great idea. This way we tell search engines about all the urls, including the urls that may not be discoverable in normal crawling process.

Another good idea is to redirect search engine directly to your sitemap through the robots.txt file.

Ok, now we know why is good to create a sitemap of your website, but we still need an answer to one question. What kind of sitemap should we build, Html sitemap, XML sitemap or a txt sitemap?

Any of the above sitemap types is good, but each search engines prefer one or two of them. For example, Yahoo prefer a simple txt sitemap and Google prefer an XML sitemap.

The sitemap structure is important as well for search engines, so be careful when you build it. You can build it manually, but also using sitemap generators. You may find free sitemap generators on the web, but they are only useful when you have small websites. Almost all of them are limited to 500 urls. For more urls you have to buy the full version.

Another kind of sitemap, is the html sitemap. This sitemap is most of the time integrated into the website, so not only search engines use it, but visitors too. If you have a big site, having a sitemap is very appreciated by visitors. This way they will navigate easier through your website and find what they are looking for.

More free search engine optimization tips for your website promotion.