Site Maps

As easy as people try to make their sites to navigate, sometimes it is hard to find all of the different pages. It can be hard for people as well as the search engine "spiders". These are the programs sent by the search engines which are crawling over your site trying to get your pages listed.

A great tool to help both is to have a "Site Map" on your web page.

You have probably come across site maps on larger sites. They may look something similar to this:

It is simply a listing showing all of the links on your web site.

Site Maps serve a few different important functions...

For Your Visitors

Most people may assume that site maps are to help out the visitors to a site. This is true to some extent.

They will can have a listing of all of the pages that your site has to offer. All in one convenient place. It can show links which are buried deeper on a site that someone was looking for.

An equally important function of a site map is...

For The Search Engines

By having a link to your site map on the main page of your site, the search engines are easily going to find it.

This is very important because search engines go from one page to another based on the links which are on that page.

If you make your links hard to find for the search engines, then your pages will have a harder time getting listed. On the other hand, if you present a page with all of the links to your site on it then the search engine has easy access to all of the pages of your site.

When Is A Site Map Necessary

If a site has more than just a few pages, it can likely benefit from a site map. A smaller site is likely to have its pages cross linked to each other anyways.

Once a site starts growing, it is impossible to have each page linked to each other. Doing so would create a very tangled navigation system in your site.

It is not a complex thing to create a site map and it doesn't have to be elaborate. It may take a while with a larger site and of course you want to keep it updated. Some content management systems such as membergate can automatically generate a site map for you. You can see our site map here.

Site maps are a great way for visitors and the search engines to explore your site.