A lot of web pages will find an SEO sitemap useful in improvingtheir performance. SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization",the process that aims to create or revise Internet sites so thatit can be better found by search engines. The objective of SEOcampaigns is to have websites appear in the top listing or firstresults page of search engines.
Internet search engines, such as Google and A9, maintain a verylarge database of Web pages and available files. To do this,they devise a program called a web crawler, or spider. Thissoftware automatically and continuously surfs and hunts contentin the Web. Pages that the spider finds are retrieved andindexed according to text content, giving more weight to titlesand paragraph headers. Spiders never stop navigating the webfrom page to page, to index the relevant content of theInternet. Besides looking at the text of titles and headers,some programs are able to identify default tags and keep alibrary of these page keywords or key phrases in the index.
When a user connects to the Internet types a query, which isautomatically interpreted as keywords, the search engine scansthe saved index and creates a list of web pages that is mostappropriate to what the user is searching for.
SEO will use all the combined techniques of keyword analysis,smart code, good content literature, link popularity study andwebsite organization to place the subject web page as high aspossible in the list of search results in search engines. Webpages displayed on the top of results pages are assumed to getthe most attention, and therefore, opportunity for earnings forweb businesses and pages with sponsor links.
Search engines usually return a list of results ranking pagesaccording to the number of Internet sites linked to them.Results can be classified as organic, or sponsored links.Sponsored links are shown prominently because their creators oragents paid the search engine. Sponsored links are the mainsource of income of search engines. "Organic" search results arethe lists of actual results from the engines index and aredirectly related to the keyword typed in the request. One of themore effective techniques of SEO is the creation of awell-organized site map in a website. Since the site's main pageand other content are directly linked to a site map, spiders canmore easily move through the website, identify the key words ofthe content, and index these for a search engine. This is wherethe SEO sitemap helps the website creator or administrator.
Site maps are usually pages filled with links. These are shownas tables or lists, although lists are generally more effective.Writing code for SEO sitemaps is very easy and simple to formatand maintain. These are ideally basic HTML pages with defaulttags, logical titles and keywords scattered in the Metadescription. Introduction areas can contain more of thekeywords. The site should have a main heading for everydirectory.
A simple list layout helps reduce unnecessary tags that might"hide" your keywords. Some spiders give more weight to thefollowing, than text in the normal body of the webpage: headingtext, content within link elements, text nearer the top of thepage and the text written for a link. Therefore, writing thekeywords and links in these areas could somehow move up the webpage's ranking. This goes for SEO sitemaps as well.
Web sites should be designed consistently, so navigation modelsshould follow the flow of the site map. Therefore, the firstsection in the site map should be the first link in thenavigation bar.
In an SEO Sitemap, and most pages, the headings contain titleattributes where more key phrases in the site map can be added.Keywords are generally well chosen and written in the body of awebpage. However, in an SEO site map with little text, key wordsshould be added as much as possible. As much as possible, weblinks should follow web page titles, and must undergo SEO duringcoding. Care must be exercised not to cram the page withkeywords and links, or the page will be interpreted as blatantspamming and not receive any traffic at all.
There is no way to guarantee that a website will be shown in thetopmost ranking of "organic" search results for an extendedperiod of time. However, smart and responsible SEO sitemaptechniques can be used to place the website high up in thesearch position. Regular monitoring and adjustment of the SEOSitemap and search results would ensure that a website is keptnear the top ranking and receiving lots of web user traffic.
About the author:Jeremiah Patton has been currently using sitemaps for easynavigation for visitors and for better crawling from searchengines. Jeremiah Patton uses a sitemap for his work at homemoms website http://www.2ndincome4u.com with great success.
