Today, there are myriad search engine optimization (SEO) tips and strategies that can help you optimize your website. Among the most important, yet underestimated ones is the use of sitemaps. By definition, a sitemaps is simply a map of your website showing its structure, sections, and the links between them.
The benefits of a sitemap are twofold: it makes your website easy to navigate by your users and it is an important way of communication with the popular search engines.
To get the most out of sitemaps, there are few factors to remember. Without much ado, therefore, here are few sitemap do and don’ts:
- + You should begin linking your sitemap from the homepage. In this way, you give search engines an easy time to find it and follow to the linked pages. If you link it from other pages, web crawlers might find a dead end along the way and quit in the process.
- + Endeavor to integrate at least a keyword in your anchor texts.
- + If you website has a few pages, you are free to list every page on your sitemap. However, if it’s a big site with many pages, just list a few. Listing many pages (or more than 99 links) make your page appear suspicious.
- + Most online marketing experts in Miami (and globally) recommend no more than 25 to 40 links on the sitemap. It makes your site easier to read both for your human visitors and search engines.
- + All the pages that you list in your site map should link back to the sitemap.
- + Ensure that all the links listed in the sitemap are clickable and correct.
Final Thoughts
Just as it makes little sense to leave your valuable website to fend for itself, you should strive to always update your sitemap. When you make changes to your website, your sitemap should also be updated to reflect that.
