World Wide Web or WWW is an ocean of websites and if you analyze the basic structure of any website you will find two very common pages – ‘Home’ and ‘Contact Us’. But there are not many websites that have a SITEMAP in them especially the older ones. A common question is – what exactly is a sitemap? To put it simply, a sitemap is a map of all the pages and links of a website. And through a sitemap you can go to any page in just one or maximum two clicks. A sitemap is a very convenient navigation structure.
According to Google webmaster guidelines having a sitemap is highly advisable because it makes search easier for your visitors as well for the search engines. Having sitemaps is not a novel idea, but with its tremendous benefits in search rankings it has become the most significant page of a website.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A sitemap is highly advisable for the best SEO practices. A sitemap actually guides the search engines where to go unlike what robots.txt file does as these tell search engines to exclude few pages from the website while indexing it. Sitemap has all the links to your website therefore they help the best in executing SEO. If a search engine robot hits the sitemap of your website then it is obvious that each and every page of your website gets indexed.
An organized website
A sitemap has all the links of all the pages; therefore it is the most organized part of your entire website. Which means that if a visitor gets lost at any point in your website, a sitemap will bring your user back to where he/she wants to be? A sitemap is very important for an organized website and great user experience. Everything is sorted according to relevance in a sitemap so it is the best part of your website. Your website becomes neatly coordinated and highly accessible.
Sitemap is important for Flash websites
Sitemap is a must requirement for flash websites or other non-html websites. Google crawlers cannot read flash websites so it is difficult to index such websites. But having an XML sitemap will help the Google crawlers to search your website and index it. It is important because only if your site gets indexed will it be ranked higher in search engines.
Having a sitemap is of great importance so make sure that your website developers and designers include sitemap when they propose you your website design.