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A sitemap is a representation (normally a hierarchical list) of the architecture of a website. The sitemap should be structured, and provide a link to pages listed. What is the purpose of a sitemap?A sitemap has two purposes. The origins of a sitemap was to make all content of a website accessible in one place. Before the use of a search facility within a website, the sitemap was a way of finding content when you could not find it on a particular page. More recently, sitemaps have been reborn with the function in assisting with Search Engine Optimisation. In order to rank and display your website's pages in search results, search engines such as Google need to first index all of your pages. Webmasters used to submit their website to Google in order for this to happen, but in 2005 Google launched 'Google Sitemaps' where webmasters could submit their whole Sitemap, meaning your website is indexed quickly and without gaps. For Google, this meant fresh content and more coverage of the web. Other search engines soon joined the new sitemaps protocol, including Yahoo, MSN, Yahoo and Ask so webmasters could submit their sitemaps to all major search engines. How do I create a sitemap?
The sitemap protocol is based on XML. As well as listing the website's URLs, the XML document can show the frequency of change and importance of the page. These factors do not affect search engine rankings. There are tools around the web that can create an XML document automatically after you submit your website URL. A website based Sitemap should be a simple, categorised list of all web pages. It should be linked to from every page on your website and be easy to navigate. For example, use a different colour for visited links so that users know where they have been. It's also helpful to have a short sentence describing each web page listed.
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