How Important is a Sitemap?

There are 2 main reasons to have a sitemap:

1. To help your visitors find the right content quick and easy.

2. Sitemap wil improve your rankings within the seach engines.

A sitemap gives an your vistors an alternative path to navigate your site. Clearly the more complex your site is, the more valuable such an alternative way to naviage is.

Search Engines index your site by following links. The better constructed your site and the simpler it is, the fewer the problems in accuracy.

At Sitemap.org, you can find a protocol now approved by the 4 major search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask. One XML file lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL, so that the search engines can more intelligently crawl your site.

To check on the correct use of a sitemap on your site:

1. Look at your sitemap page and see if it really adds value for your visitors.

2. If you don't have a Google Webmaster Account, Sign up right now! (Google Link)

3. Download this Free Google Sitemap generator.
   With phpSitemapNG you can create sitemap files in different formats as e.g. the xml-based Google Sitemaps format, RSS, txt or html-based.