5) Sitemaps
Sitemaps are just that, maps of your site to help both visitors and search engine spiders find their way. So sitemaps are both a navigation aid and a SEO tool. Enough reasons right there to start using them! 
However, for present purposes we are only concerned with the latter function, sitemaps for SEO.
As Google puts it:
“A Sitemap file lets you tell us about all the pages on your site, and optionally, information about those pages, such as which are most important and how often they change. By submitting a Sitemap file, you can take control of the first part of the crawling/indexing processes: our discovery of the pages.
This may be particularly helpful if your site has dynamic content, pages that aren’t easily discovered by following links, or if your site is new and has few links to it.” (Read more)
How to get started with sitemaps:
- Make sure your sitemap follows the Sitemap protocol, a Google-created protocol in XML format. Many other search engines now also accept this standard. (Read more)
- Finish your website before submitting a sitemap and make sure it adheres to good SEO and HTML practices.
- Create a sitemap. You can use the free Google Sitemap Generator if you’re versed in setting up scripts, or use a third-party script, software of website to do so. Some are free, some not. Here are some of our favorites:
- If you use WordPress, we recommend the free Google (XML) Sitemaps plugin;
- If your website has fewer than 500 pages, you can use the free XML-Sitemaps Online Sitemap Generator. They also have a standalone script for larger websites.
- Submit your sitemap to the search engines that accept them. You can just ping Google and Yahoo via the above software, or go to the following URLs directly (substitute “www.yourdomain.com” with your domain name):
- Google:
- Yahoo:
- Ask.com:
- MSN (via moreover.com):
If you want to be able to see more stats and manage your site and sitemaps better, consider signing up for a Yahoo and Google webmaster account:
- Google:
Next: 6) Definitions
