The Importance of Sitemaps in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

There are many techniques that are involved within SEO, yet there are techniques that any web designer should take into account when creating a website from a non-SEO point of view that actually helps the SEO of a website; one of these being a Sitemap.

What is a Sitemap?

A Sitemap is basically a map of your entire website contained on one page. This is especially helpful for people wanting to navigate to a specific page within your website. On the other hand, it is also very helpful for spiders crawling and indexing your website. Sitemaps are considered to be best practise for web designers, and have been considered this for a long time (by myself anyway!). From an SEO perspective, HTML Sitemaps are not the only Sitemap you need.

Types of Sitemap

There are two types of Sitemaps; HTML and XML. HTML Sitemaps are great for humans to look at, and navigate their way through your website. Computers are slightly different, in which they need an XML Sitemap. This helps the search engines crawl your site much more efficiently meaning you get the best possible rankings you can by letting the search engine ’see’ all of your website.

Benefits

From an SEO perspective, the benefits of a Sitemap are huge. Whenever a web page on a website changes, the Sitemap will be updated. This means the search engines know pretty much instantly when your website is updated. Websites being updated regularly are given praise by the search engines (by rankings) and so the search engines knowing your site is updated is a good thing. Your website can also be classified a lot easier due to the content on your web pages. If your website is a company website, then most of the content on the website is going to be related in some way. Search engines relate the content and pages to one another thus improving how they perceive your website.

What Next?

Once you have your Sitemap, it needs to be uploaded to your website and also uploaded to the search engines so they know it is there. XML Sitemaps are currently not supported by two of the major players, Yahoo! And MSN. Yet, it is only a matter of time before they catch on. Creating an XML Sitemap now is future-proofing your website so why not?