How to Make a Sitemap For Your Website In Five Steps
A website's sitemap can be compared to the table of contents of a book
. The sitemap is important because it guides visitors to the parts of the website in which they are interested. The sitemap allows surfers to reach their destination without wasting time.
Sitemaps are also important from the point of view of search engines. If the search engine finds a sitemap it is much more likely that your page will be fully visited (spidered) and indexed; allowing web surfers to find your pages in their searches.
Creating a sitemap is now easier than it used to be as software and online sitemap generation has become more common. It is worthwhile though to know how the process works and so this article will describe how to build your own sitemap using Notepad, a webpage creator and a little patience.
1) Create the site's listing on using Notepad.
It is not necesary to use Notepad, any wordprocessing software will work, but all Windows PCs have the program. Firstly, type in all pages and all links you have on the site. Create it as though you were listing the contents of a book. Make a draft version first and then go through the site again; in this way you are less likely to miss anything out.
2) Make a new web page for the sitemap.
You can insert the sitemap in your website on an existing page or create an entirely new page. Take the listing of pages and links that you made previously and copy/paste them into your website creator program and lay out the pages and links. If you made the site you are working on by yourself this part will be easy!
3) Insert a link to the sitemap.
You won't be able to aee the sitemap if you don't have a link for it. Create a link on the front page of the site so that visitors can see it as soon as they land on your index/home page and be directed appropriately.
4) Check your the sitemap!
It is important to check that the map works. Test every link on the page, if you get any errors, fix it accurately (and immediately so you do not forget!). Run through every page to make sure that all are accounted for - no missing pages.
Place the sitemap and modified home/index page on your webhost and double check it. It should work as smoothly as it did the final dry run. Errors should be absent at this stage since you already checked it locally (but do check!).
The steps provided above are the manual way to create a sitemap. If you search on the web, you will find online programs that can do all this work for you. All you need do is type in the URL of your website and the sitemap will be created with the click of a button.
How to Make a Sitemap For Your Website In Five Steps