The Importance of Site Maps & Sitemaps

HTML site maps and XML Sitemaps both serve the same important function of providing the search engines information about your site. The HTML site map is the traditional method. However in recent years, search engines have developed the XML Sitemap protocol to assist in spidering. The benefits are:

• Allows Google, Yahoo and MSN to locate all the site’s content
• Informs the search engine when content changes
• Shows spiders deep content that is unable to be found in a normal crawl process
• Tells the spider the date the content was last modified
• Assigns the importance or priority of information
• Allows robots to crawl a web site in a much more timely fashion

An HTML site map is still very useful for site owners who would like to organize their site and provide information in a more clearer manner. HTML site maps also lend to usability for visitors who can't use or don't understand your navigation.

For more information about Sitemaps visit http://sitemaps.org.
You can also view Google's site map at http://www.google.com/sitemap.html.

Effective SEO techniques for your website

Let’s get real. Getting great search engine rankings is not rocket science. Also, easy and effective SEO doesn’t cost the White House. The thumb rule: Create a real site for real people. And let inbound links come naturally, to your website. Caution: Don’t pay for links, it’s ugly and controversial too.

So how do you gain inbound links? First off, don’t be content with a website, but include a blog with tons of content, to attract more traffic. A good blog will grow content fast and always pay off in the long run.

Sometimes, you do all the things right but still don’t get the ranking right for your website. Here’s a big tip to boost your search engine rankings: Provide the search engines with sitemaps to your website. The sitemap essentially speeds up the search engines like Google and Yahoo to spider, index and rank your web pages, so that what used to take months now happens real quick. The search engines will find your site, search it, index it in their database, and most importantly, show your site high up in the search results. As you grow your blog, your new posts will be easily spidered, indexed and ranked because of your sitemap submissions. Now, you are on way to becoming an SEO specialist – and keep your White House!