Sitemaps

Sitemaps are a lot like a road map. Sitemaps are a device to help both your human visitors get around and find things on your web site, as well as the search engine spiders. And you want to keep your visitors happy whether they are human or automated.

html sitemaps are for your human visitors and some of the lesser search engines.  This sitemap is the one you read as you visit other sites on the web and need help finding things. Some think sitemaps are not very important and that people really don't use them, but I find that I use sitemaps on other web sites quite a lot.

Also, many people, including some of the gurus, dismiss the lesser search engines. These are the same guys, by the way who encourage you to use adwords. Now, don't get me wrong, I am all for using adwords but I don't turn down free traffic either. Organic traffic from the search engines is both free and targeted, a winning combination. This traffic from lesser search engines may come in smaller numbers than Google, but remember that it is both free and targeted. A little here, a little there, it all adds up!

Google Sitemaps

Google sitemaps are not designed for human visitors, but are a way to help Google spider all the pages on your web site. And they offer a way to let Google know when you have added new content to encourage them to come and re-spider your web site.

Getting indexed, and keeping the search engine spiders returning to your web site is a process you want to work on continually, and the Google sitemap is just another tool to help in this process.

Google sitemaps may seem intimidating at the outset, but setting up a Google sitemap is free and not as difficult as it may at first seem. This video I am going to recommend takes about ten minutes to watch, and will explain the process extremely well. See how simple a Google Sitemap can be to set up.

Sitemaps are just one more way to optimize your web site for the search engines

You put a lot of time and effort into building a web site and you want it to be successful. Use both an html sitemap and a google sitemap to further optimize your web site to please and help both your human visitors, and the search engines.

Profitable Home Based Internet Businesses | Website Builders | Forums | Resources