Search Engine Optimization: Build Your Own Sitemap

Sitemap development and management is a vital component of search engine optimization (SEO). SEO educators report that:

  • Sitemap development as part of your overall search engine optimization strategy is more effective than widespread URL submissions
  • Search engines prefer to find websites "on their own" rather than through URL submission (there is no need to pay someone for submitting your URL to a multitude of search engines!)

While you can purchase software applications that create sitemaps for you, in this article, we are discussing a sitemap that you can create yourself.

Build a web page sitemap

Your sitemap makes it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for on your site by displaying the contents of your site all on one page. Your sitemap makes it easier for search engines to index your site's interior pages through the text links you will build as you follow the steps outlined below.

Here's how to do it:

  • Using your html editor, create a new page
  • List page titles of your website
  • Make a text link out of each title
  • Include a brief description of each page, using your keywords as appropriate, so that your page does not appear as just a list of links (this can be interpreted as "spam" by search engines)
  • Upload your visitor sitemap
  • Place a link to your sitemap on your home page

Congratulations - you've created a sitemap for your website!

Sitemap results

Using website analytics, we are able to see that indexed interior pages (see above) bring in visitors. For example, one week, Funked Up Design®'s glossary was visited by users looking for "website navigability research." This information indicates that the website has been crawled deeply enough to index content on interior pages of the website, even bypassing the main page. The glossary was in the sixth place on the first page of Google on the "website navigability research" results, at the time the search was conducted (12/2006), and remains at the time of this writing (01/04/2007).

Search engine optimization is not an exact science. There are no guarantees for search engine placement - SERPs can change frequently. However, by following SEO industry guidelines, we can increase our online visibility - resulting in the opportunity to serve more customers!

Questions to think about

Could a first-time visitor find what they need in one click by using your web page sitemap?

Did your sitemap have an effect on your SERP placement(s), i.e., have your interior pages been indexed?

Is your web page sitemap an accurate representation of your business?

Please feel free to contact us to learn more about search engine optimization.