jonathan lackman
MCSE, MCSA, Project Management, SEO, Web Design
Site Maps
There are two basic kinds of sitemaps that you should have for your site. They're not on this site, but then this isn't a serious monetized site anyhow.
Type 1
The first type you should have is the .xml file that search engines use to spider your site. You can create this manually, or use an online tool. A couple of tools I like are http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/, or http://www.sitemapdoc.com/Default.aspx
The key here is that you create the .xml (or .gz) sitemap, download it to your computer, then you have to upload it to your site. Then, when you go to Google Webmaster tools, you tell it to index that file. The benefit here is that this is a quick and easy way to notify Google of site changes, and initiate an index of your site, usually within 10-30 minutes.
Type 2
Type two is the page you put on your site for surfers to use. This is like a Table of Contents in a book, and shows all of the pages on your site as hyperlinks. Why do you need this if you have navigation? The answer is simple; many navigation schemes, especially ones using JavaScript, are not "readable" by spiders, and can lead to your site not getting indexed. You can alleviate this with a manually (notepad or online generator) created sitemap. You upload it as a .htm/.html file to your site, and then link to it from your home page. Now, search engine spiders can easily find all pages on your site because the sitemap lists all of them. The best online generator for this sitemap is http://www.sitemapdoc.com/Default.aspx
Once created using this online tool, you can open it in your web editor and arrange/categorize it for look and feel, and link it to your home page. Here is an example of the one created for this site, with no modifications.
