Want improved search rankings? this is how.
The past couple of weeks I’ve been spending a fair amount of time on updating a social network I run that targets members of a cultural traditional religions. In the midst of this project I started to build a sitemap for the network and felt the need to share the importance of implementing a sitemap in your blog marketing efforts.
In Blog marketing you want to make sure that you’re optimizing your blog to the best of your ability and including a sitemap is a good search engine optimization strategy to employ. Not only does it helps the search engines, but it also enhances the navigating experience for your users.
What is a sitemap?
Sitemaps simplify the navigation process for your users and they also tell the search engines what pages should be indexed in the results and how often those particular indexed pages are updated. It grants your site the ability to communicate with the search engines and helps the search engine to understand the hierarchical structure of your site.
Why should you use a sitemap?
Sitemaps make it very easy for the search engine robots to crawl your site and thus will help to improve your search engine rankings. With improved search engine rank you can expect to see an improvement in visitor traffic.
When should a sitemap be created?
Typically sitemaps are created during the planning or design stages of website development. Having a written/hard copy site map helps you to plan the structure of your blog or site and simplifies the layout design stage. Most blogs start off without a sitemap and typically this is fine, however, it’s important that you include one as soon as possible. Those running a wordpress platform blog can install a sitemap wordpress plugin and this sitemap will automatically be created for you.
Where do you place the sitemap link?
Most folks place their sitemaps on the footer of the page, but some say that it’s best to include your sitemap in the top right corner of your web pages. You should consider placing the sitemap link on the homepage of your blog or site since the home page is typically the highest ranking part of your site and probably the first place the search engine robots visit when crawling your pages.
Recipe for a Search Engine Friendly Sitemap:
- Make sure to create links to the most important pages on your blog or site.
- Include short descriptions of those links.
- Make sure to include niche related keyword phrases/links on your sitemap.
- Ensure that your sitemap is on the root or homepage of your blog/site.
If you run a wordpress blog, install this sitemap plugin on your blog.
For those running sites on different platforms you can try the following free sitemap generating services to help you develop your sitemaps.
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp
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Hi,
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Thanks for tips and advice.