SEO Consult Blog

The very early stages of a Search Engine Optimization campaign will require that you first get the pages of your site indexed and then follow this up with the building of links throughout the life of your website. While getting indexed by Google and the other search engines could once have been considered a difficult task, the story has changed significantly and there are several ways to do this now. Submitting a sitemap will get your pages indexed quickly and offering a sitemap as a viable method of navigating your website offers other benefits too.

Site Navigation

Site navigation is an integral part of any website’s design. Without good navigation, it isn’t just the search engine spiders that will struggle to find their way around, although struggle they will. Visitors need clear direction when they first enter your online domain. Whether you choose to offer image or flash based navigation, you should also provide a text based alternative. If you use a sitemap to this end then provide a text link to the sitemap in a prominent position on the template of your site.

Search Engine Spiders

Sitemaps are also good for search engine spiders, and these little pieces of search engine software are pretty much the entire concentration of your Search Engine Optimization campaign. Spiders follow links from one page to another in order to navigate their way around the Internet. In doing so they discover and subsequently index new web pages that are then ranked and appear in the search result pages. Your website’s ranking is the main point of a Search Engine Optimization campaign and so you need to concentrate on giving the spiders what they want.

Problems With Spider Senses

Spiders struggle to properly follow image and flash based navigation, although they have improved greatly in this area. By offering a text based sitemap you can ensure that the spiders crawl through every single page of your website every time they visit. This means that newly added pages will be indexed and ranked quicker and you can then concentrate your efforts on building links and adding even more pages to your site.

Webmaster Tools And Sitemap Submission

Google and the other search engines offer suites of tools that are designed specifically for Webmasters. One of these tools is the sitemap submission tool, which has proven especially beneficial to webmasters that partake in SEO. Submitting a sitemap indicates to Google that your website is in the wild and ready to be indexed and ranked for your keywords. Furthermore, Google will consider the keywords that you have used in creating the links when first indexing your page.

Sitemaps For Search Engine Optimization Success

While the spiders will visit as frequently as they believe you add new pages, you can further give them a little nudge whenever you make changes to your website structure. When you add or remove a new page filled with Search Engine Optimization content you can resubmit your Sitemap and Google will end its spiders down through the web of your sitemap to check your new pages. This combined with improved navigation options and a quick way to get all of your pages indexed is why a sitemap is vital to your website and your SEO.

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