Does a sitemap increase your rank in search-engines?

February 1st, 2008 · No Comments

All websites should have sitemaps. But, all sitemaps are not alike. At first we can make two distinctions between the uses of sitemaps;

For search-engines
For visitors

A sitemap for visitors consists of one page, with all interesting links. So each visitor can find all interesting pages on one page. This means a sitemap for visitors is the same as an index in a book.
A sitemap for search-engines is something completely different. Most times the content is the same as the links in the sitemap for your visitors. But the sitemap for search-engines is invisible for visitors. The purpose of these sitemaps is that search-engines will find and index all the pages of your website.

How can you built a sitemap for search engines?

The easiest way is surf to XML-sitemaps. Scroll down and fill in your URL and answer all the questions.

How does Google think of sitemaps?

Google says having a sitemap is important. Last month they answered some questions about having sitemaps. You can find these questions with answers on FAQ about Sitemaps. Some questions and answers are very interesting.

Summary

A sitemap does not influence your position in the search engines. A sitemap will index more pages of your website. Of course more pages in the index of Google means a bigger chance for more traffic to your website.

Conclusion

Make a sitemap on your website! Not only for your visitors but also for the search engines.

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