Do I Really Need a Site Map?

Something not all sites have of which they should have is a sitemap. Why does a website need a sitemap for exactly?

For search engines, indexing and ranking, having a site map is essential to making sure that your entire site will get spidered and indexed in the search engines. Getting your site fully indexed and spidered can be tedious at times, and with implementing a sitemap you can be assured that the search engines will be able to fully index your site.

For us humans, having a sitemap is a great help to being able to find that all important document/information faster. Lets face it, not all sites are easy to navigate and having the option to click on the sitemap link gives you the option to find what you need faster.

Those are the two reasons for having a sitemap, so now you will want to make sure that the search engines will be able to properly index and follow the links on the page. To check this you can use Lynx Viewer. If there are any problems spidering the page with this program, then chances are the search engine spiders will encounter the same problems as well, and these will need to be addressed.

Update - Google Adds Google Sitemap Program!: Just after writing this article Google releases Google Sitemaps which is to help get your site spidered. You can find it here https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login. If there are any problems it will appear after they reviewed your page. Once Google crawls mine, I will post the details on it.

Gerard Manning
Canadian Search Engine Marketing Company
Search Engine Marketing Agency :: Manning Search Marketing