What You don’t Know – Can Hurt You, Or Why You Too Need a Site Map.

In the past when I was first starting out in the web designing business. I would build a small website and I really believe a sitemap was not all that important. After all I made sure the navigation was very clear and visitors never had to go deeper than 3 clicks to get to the pages they wanted. It is a really important step to have clear navigation – and the minimal clicks are key as well, but a site map well that was for the bigger more developed websites –those that really needed a lot of structure right? Wrong!!

I hate to admit it but boy was I wrong!

Always wanting (and needing) to learn more, a client and I had a consultation with a major SEO (Search Engine Optimization) consulting firm. I believed we had done everything right but it is always a good idea to double check – then triple check.

SEO (search engine optimization) rules do change from time to time. Usually subtly but these small changes are important. It is actually good to check each year to see what the difference in the SEO rules (algorithms’) are so you can tweak your website accordingly. Once we were in this consultation – and started to converse he asked “I see you don’t have a site map, why not”? I explained to him that I was unaware that a site map was of much importance for a smaller website.

He quickly – told me no it is really an important step in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and all websites should have a xml site map before they start submitting to search engines. I believe those of use who do develop and maintain websites need to learn constantly – and so I took his advice to heart.

I developed a site map for my client a few days after having this discussion and it wasn’t more than a week or so later when I searched Google – the website had been re-indexed and to my surprise we also had the sub-links under it!

When I put my clients website URL into Google they it popped right up on top and underneath had an index – 7 pages listed as sub-links right on Google’s search engine. Seeing the proof such a short time later really did prove that I had been wrong on this issue. Never again – you only have to show me once I have learned.

Seeing the improvement in the Google listing made I wanted to tell you how important a site map is to every website.

It is not just about the .html site map that your web visitors will see but a site map that is developed in xml (that only the search engines see) that can make a difference in your indexing on Google as well as other search engines.

Do you have a site map for your website? Is it built correctly?

It is important to have both an xml site map and an .xhtml site map… Not only is it important – It is Priceless...

Pamela Jacob - Artista Design

If you need a Site Map built email me I can help pamela@artistadesign.com

How Search Engines Work

A lot of business owners are perplexed when it comes to how search engines work. Below you will find an excerpt out of my book “Search Engines from A to Z”. Search engines are the key to finding specific information on the web. Without the use of sophisticated search engines, it would be virtually impossible to locate anything on the internet without knowing a specific URL. URL: is the domain name that is in the address bar of a web site. ie: www.artistadesign.com There are basically three types of search engines: Those that are powered by robots or spiders; those that are powered by human submissions; and those that are a combination of the two. Spiders: A program that automatically goes over web pages and collects information. Spiders are used to feed web page content to search engines. Crawler-based engines send crawlers, or spiders, out on to the internet. These spiders visit a website, read the information on the web page, read the site's Key words and also follow the links that the site connects to. The spider returns all that information back to a central database where the data is indexed. The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed, and the frequency with which this happens depends on the search engine. Human-powered search engines rely on humans to submit information that is then indexed and catalogued. Only information that is submitted is put into the index. In both cases, when you go to a search engine to locate information, you are actually searching through the index that the search engine has created. Search engines are compiled of giant data-bases full of information that is collected and stored. This explains why sometimes a search on a commercial search engine, such as Google or Yahoo!, will return results that are in fact dead pages. The search results are based on the information that has been collected, if the information hasn't been updated, and the web page becomes invalid the search engine treats the page as still being active. It will remain that way until the search engine updates the information. So why will the same search on different search engines produce different results? It depends on what the spiders find or what the person submits. More importantly, not every search engine uses the same criteria or algorithm when indexing the web page information. Algorithm: is what the search engines use to determine the importance of the information on the web page. One of the elements that a search engine algorithm scans is the frequency, location and consistency of keywords on a Website. Another common element that algorithms analyze is the way that pages link to other pages. By analyzing how pages link to each other, a search engine can both determine what a page is about (if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page) and whether that page is considered "important" and deserving of a boost in ranking. Search engines are becoming wise to Web masters who build artificial links into their sites in order to build an artificial ranking. That is why it is now more important than ever to have content that matches the keywords in your meta-tags, to link to relevant sites and have backlinks from sites that are not only relevant but have a higher than 3 ranking in Google.