HOW TO USE SITEMAPS

A firsthand information  on usage of sitemaps

Today with the advent of sophisticated tools to make user friendly sites many innovations and developments are going on. Many stalwarts like Google and others have made significant contributions to this field. Practically specking your site should  be scrutinized and the site should be indexed by Google every minute. In order to achieve this high functionality many changes should be done to web skeleton. Among many subtle changes that are needed  for your site to survive  in  competitive market one  significant step would be addition of a good site map.

Definition and structure
What exactly is sitemap? Simply put site map will tell the search engine bot how many pages are there in you  site. It will  index the site according to relevance. If we have to define the site map then for clarity purpose sitemap is like a road map. It gives clear picture about the basic structure of site. Like it tells how many pages and  where in the root directory those are mentioned. It  also has the responsibity  to tell the search engine bots about what  specific data is present in the  site. Like it gives information about the videos and images. More valid information can be found at the URL 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps
Usage of  sitemaps
While many web masters have reported improved functionality of their site like  advanced indexing,   the correct method of usage of sitemap can be got form Google section of sitemaps. When using sitemaps you don’t have to start coding in xml language. Just rough idea of how and when to use sitemap would be handy. Since sitemap gives a systemized identification of all the elements of your site so its recommend that for each element a separate list be formed. The following element should be in a separate sitemaps. They are videos, mobiles, images, sitemap index and standard sitemaps.

Ways to build sitemaps
It is recommended that  to do a  firsthand need analysis of before coming  to build a sitemap. You must get answers to questions like what  are various CMs that you like to have.  In addition how many pages will  you  be submitting. Also you should do  a firsthand analysis about how you  exactly like your site to be indexed by search engine. Next you should be bothered about whether you want a sophisticated sitemap or simple one wherein  you   give your input and simply forget. What should the level of indexation is also important.

Next find out a good site map generator. There are two kinds of site map generator. One that crawls every page and the other which  inspects  your site form back end. You must also decide which urls you like to submit. Again you must decide what  should be at robo.txt. After you have run your sitemap then at the root directory you must have the structure  as   www.example.com/sitemap.xmlThen the next step would be submitting the sitemap. After you have submitted the sitemap to Google or Bing then you must go for validation. Thereafter you should periodically check   sitemaps. So the sitemap comes to be very useful for SEO .  It makes your site stand front among site searches.

Author bio: The author is a freelance writer from Pune. She writes frequently on various magazines and sites.