What is a Sitemap and how can it help with website promotion?

In general, there are two types of sitemaps. The first type of sitemap is an index page listing the pages of your site, and is meant to help human users find the information they need. Users will find the page by clicking on a link from another page.

XML Sitemaps, usually called Sitemaps (with a capital S), are a way for you to give search engines information about your site and make sure they find all the pages. This is the type of Sitemap we'll be discussing in this article.

In its simplest form, a Sitemap is a file that lists the URLs for a web site along with additional information about each URL, such as when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is within the site. By following the site map, search engines can crawl your site correctly.

Search engines usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data by allowing web crawlers to pick up all relevant URLs and learn about them using the associated metadata. Using the Sitemap protocol doesn’t guarantee that your web site’s pages will be included in search engines, but it helps search engines to do a better job of crawling your site. Web sites are never penalized for submitting Sitemaps, so creating and submitting your Sitemap to the search engines can only help with your website promotion.

When should my Web site have a Sitemap?

All sites should have a Sitemap, but they are particularly helpful if:

• Your web site has dynamic content.
• Your site has pages that aren't easily discovered by the search engine during the crawl process - for example, pages featuring AJAX or Flash content
• Your site is new and has few links to it. Search engines crawl the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn't well linked, it may be hard for them to discover it.
• Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.

You can also use a Sitemap to provide additional information about your pages, including:

• How often the pages on your site change. For example, you might update your product page daily, but update your About Us page only once every few months.
• The date each page was last modified.
• The relative importance of pages on your site. This priority only indicates the importance of a particular page relative to other pages on your site, and doesn't impact the ranking of your pages in search results.

If these tips and tricks don’t increase your position in Google’s search results, you may wish to engage a professional Search Engine Optimization firm to help with your website promotion. Network Solutions has a team of experienced optimization experts who can help you move up the rankings. A variety of packages are available to suit your particular needs.