How Important are Sitemaps in SEO

An effective SEO strategy primarily includes keywords rich content and useful backlinks. The web pages should be indexed in search engines that need to be crawled and cached before they rank in the SERPs (search engine results pages). To get the website listed in major search engines what most of the webmasters do is to submit the home page URL to the search engine which crawls the site to find what pages exist.

As the web world is evolving with each passing day, webmasters are now quite aware of the importance of Sitemaps. Search engines index the pages through links. Since thousands of pages are submitted to Google everyday, sitemaps came into force to facilitate refined searching. It helps web crawlers and online users to find content easily and quickly. Before we delve deep into the topic let's see what exactly are Sitemaps.

A sitemap, as the name suggests is a map that lists all pages of a website. Each page listed in the site is hyperlinked to the respective web page. Sitemaps are useful since it enables readers to quickly find the pages. If the visitor feels lost and fails to reach a desired page, he can use sitemaps and easily navigate around the website. It helps the online user understand the structure and the layout of the website. The user can easily and quickly gain access and reach the page they want to.

Not only for the visitors, sitemaps are equally importance in SEO. A web developer should get all web pages in the search engine database. Submitting the sitemap that contains links of all web pages will allow the pages to get indexed easily by the search engine.

There are two types of types of sitemaps- HTML and XML version. An XML sitemap can be submitted to Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer, and MSN's Live Search Webmaster Tools. XML sitemap proves very useful as the search engine indexes all deep content. It also contains URLs with additional Meta data about each, listing its recent updation, its changes, and its position in comparison with other websites.

Google was the first search engine to offer sitemap service. Google Sitemap service was introduced in June 2005 and since then getting the web pages indexed has become lot more easier. Google Sitemap enables Google to find the pages available on the net easily. Moreover Google can easily stay updated if any URL has been added, changed or updated.

Once Google validates your sitemap. You can easily get useful information about your website. You will be able to know which keywords are the users clicking on to read the content on your website, the number of internal and external links present in your website, and also if there are any broken links.

The Sitemap has proved beneficial in SEO. Since the indexing is quite easier, the search engines easily find the website when a search for the keyword pertaining to a specific website is made. It has benefited the webmasters to run their websites pretty easily and also gain better position in the rankings.