posted by ADMIN // March 17, 2009 // Build Your Website

Once you have created your website, structured it around keywords and key phrases, established links and generally optimized it for search engine ranking without detracting from its customer appeal, don't make the one mistake that can potentially undermine all your hard work.

The one mistake that many people make is that despite their best efforts to implement great strategies for SEO, they simply forget, overlook or just don't know to make sure that they have a good site map. While a site map is a useful tool if you have visitors to your site that haven't found what they are after via usual navigation, the significance of a site map from an SEO perspective is slightly different.

With a great site map you will be able to get search engine crawlers to every page of your website, indexing all of them. If you know about SEO then you understand that the indexing of your site is vital for boosting your page ranking, therefore having a good site map is crucial once you have those crawlers there.

To create a good site map there are a few simple steps to follow. First, write the site map in simple HTML code and keep the categories in order. Next, use simple lists that are reflective of the actual structure of the website, i.e. category headings should match top level pages and so on. Finally, if you are unsure take a look at what other sites have done with their site maps; this can be really helpful if you want to make sure you are on the right track.

Site Maps for Large websites

If your site is on the large side then a few lines of explanation throughout the site map will help visitors to find their way to exactly what they are looking for. This aids the algorithms of the search engines to find their way around your links also. There are a few site map tools available that can be helpful if you are creating a site map that is to be used with a large website.

As a rule, look for a site map tool that will run from your desktop, can work with templates that will help to structure your site map and will hope you group your pages into the applicable categories. With the introduction of the Google Site map Protocol, then it is also worth ensuring your site map tool creates a site map that meets this requirement as well.

Google Site Maps

When you are developing your site map you should take into account the fact that Google has introduced a Site Map Protocol. This simply means that you need to build your site map in such a way that you include information required by this protocol and that you create the site map not in HTML but in XML format.

For your Google site map you will need to incorporate information about URLs: the last time you modified them, if they are regularly changed, and a measure of their importance against other URLs in the site map. The Google protocol also requires the user of XML not HTML site maps. This is important as it is a format that the search engines spiders will more easily recognize and understand.

If you are unsure about how you can create a site map that meets these criteria, then it could be worthwhile to look at the site map generator tools available. There is a Google Site Map Generator tool available through Google, and there are others such as Site Map Pro, that can be found online.

A well built site map is a crucial part of your SEO plan. If you have gone through the process of optimizing your pages then don't fall down at the last hurdle. Invest the time and energy today into creating a quality site map for your web pages. It truly will be time well invested.

Deep Arora is an Internet marketer with over seven years of online experience. He teaches internet marketing from his blog at HowIDid.com.

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Deep Arora

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