I’m going to talk about a technique that can help get your site indexed quicker and with the possibility of a better ranking. It’s all because of the one thing your site might be missing. That one thing is a sitemap. A sitemap is, as the name implies, a map of your website. Basically, it’s a list of all the pages on your site in a format that is easy to see and can be quickly scanned for the desired location within the pages of your site. The importance of a sitemap shouldn’t be underestimated. In fact, Google loves sitemaps. Maybe it’s because the search engine spider can easily understand what your website is about without having to access every single link. Instead, it can simply verify and confirm the listings in your sitemap.

If you’re tech-savvy and have a desire to write your own code, you can make your own sitemap – one that the engines will appreciate and understand. Ideally, you want yours to automatically update when you either change a page or add a new one. Doing a manual sitemap can be done, but it’s a whole lot easier to automate this process!

When I talk about the importance of sitemap, I am referring not only to the benefits provided you by the search engines and the resulting higher rankings, but also to the benefits to your readers. You see, your sitemap represents an inside look at the construction of your site. It shows how everything is tied together.

In your sitemap, you can choose to have a description for each page that is readily available to your readers with direct links to each page, or you can simply have a text list of links for the pages on your site. I prefer having the descriptions of each page in front of me so I can decide if I want to continue, or to keep searching. I remember and appreciate websites when I see a proper sitemap because that tells me the Webmaster took the time to think about me, the reader.

Speaking of links in your sitemap, let me give you another tip that will help in your rankings. For all of the links in your website, always make sure you are using direct linking. Most people use direct linking at times and don’t even know it. Other times, they use relative linking. Let me explain what this means.

When you create a link to a page on your site (I’ll call the page, “articles”), please be sure to use the full URL for the link. When the search engine spider follows this link, it will end up where it should and will be in the correct format. This will appease the spider and help you get a better ranking. (On the other hand, don’t use this format: /articles). This may cause the spider to become confused and may even drop your domain from their index. This would not be good!

I hope that after reading this you understand the importance of a sitemap. To many, a sitemap isn’t even considered as an important part of SEO. Don’t be fooled! Use a sitemap in every website you create.