For those who are not familiar with sitemaps, a sitemap is quite simply a map or a guide that lists all the sections and pages of your website. One may find that a lot of websites have this feature, particularly the HTML type, for the benefit of users or visitors who have specific needs that may be answered by content in your site that is not readily located by clicking on section links or using search engines. It is a practical way of ensuring that users of your site are able to maximise the site to suit their needs.
Aside from the
HTML sitemap, other types are the Text and XML sitemaps. A text sitemap is a simple text file containing your website's list of URLs, and that may then be submitted to a search engine, such as
Yahoo, to inform them that the pages are up. This, then, allows their search engine spiders to visit the site and index it for future searches. An XML sitemap, meanwhile, is one in a formatted file recognised by
Google Sitemaps that helps the search engine index your site's URLs and keep track of changes made in the site.
Those who do business online recognise the reality that their sites need to be constantly updated with offerings and content that are interesting and in high demand, to keep the business running. As your site grows with more and more pages, while the increase of similar sites—your competition—threaten to reduce your hits, an updated sitemap proves more vital in the survival of your venture. Moreover, using all three types of sitemaps can help boost exposure for your site.
For this job, owners of big websites or a multitude of small online businesses can make use of
free sitemap generators available online. Purchasing an unlimited version sitemap generator is also a good idea for the most updated sitemaps. You can think of using sitemaps as free or low-cost advertising for your business.
Online businesses with constantly updated sitemaps of their websites can make sure Internet users who are voluntarily seeking out specific information will find their way to the site's content that even closely matches their needs. For instance, when a user does a search for a specific product, an updated sitemap can help a website with a wide array of product offerings to be included in the results and provide the user with a direct URL. Consequently, both the website and the user benefit from it; with the help of a sitemap, the search engine takes the user directly from the results page to the relevant web page, and with more people easily finding your site, business profits are not that far behind.
The easy way to build sitemaps for your site is to find a website generator that creates all three types of sitemaps. One such product is provided by
XML-Sitemaps.com, which has basic the information on sitemap generation, as well as easy to follow guidelines.
XML-Sitemaps.com offers a free online
sitemap generator that creates
Google Sitemaps, Text Sitemaps for Yahoo and a
HTML Sitemap to help spiders index your site more thoroughly.
