A
firsthand information on usage of
sitemaps
Today with the advent
of sophisticated tools to make user friendly sites many innovations and developments
are going on. Many stalwarts like Google and others have made significant contributions
to this field. Practically specking your site should be scrutinized and the site should be indexed
by Google every minute. In order to achieve this high functionality many
changes should be done to web skeleton. Among many subtle changes that are needed
for your site to survive in competitive
market one significant step would be
addition of a good site map.
Definition
and structure
What exactly is sitemap?
Simply put site map will tell the search engine bot how many pages are there in
you site. It will index the site according to relevance. If we have
to define the site map then for clarity purpose sitemap is like a road map. It
gives clear picture about the basic structure of site. Like it tells how many
pages and where in the root directory
those are mentioned. It also has the responsibity
to tell the search engine bots about
what specific data is present in
the site. Like it gives information
about the videos and images. More valid information can be found at the URL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps
Usage of sitemaps
While many web masters have reported improved
functionality of their site like advanced indexing, the correct method of usage of sitemap can be
got form Google section of sitemaps. When using sitemaps you don’t have to
start coding in xml language. Just rough idea of how and when to use sitemap
would be handy. Since sitemap gives a systemized identification of all the elements
of your site so its recommend that for each element a separate list be formed. The
following element should be in a separate sitemaps. They are videos, mobiles, images,
sitemap index and standard sitemaps.
Ways to build sitemaps
It is recommended that to do a
firsthand need analysis of before coming to build a sitemap. You must get answers to
questions like what are various CMs that
you like to have. In addition how many
pages will you be submitting. Also you should do a firsthand analysis about how you exactly like your site to be indexed by search
engine. Next you should be bothered about whether you want a sophisticated
sitemap or simple one wherein you give
your input and simply forget. What should the level of indexation is also
important.
Next find out a good site map generator. There are
two kinds of site map generator. One that crawls every page and the other which
inspects your site form back end. You must also decide
which urls you like to submit. Again you must decide what should be at robo.txt. After you have run
your sitemap then at the root directory you must have the structure as www.example.com/sitemap.xml. Then the
next step would be submitting the sitemap. After you have submitted the sitemap
to Google or Bing then you must go for validation. Thereafter you should periodically
check sitemaps. So the sitemap comes to
be very useful for SEO . It makes your
site stand front among site searches.
Author bio: The author is a
freelance writer from Pune. She writes frequently on various magazines and
sites.