Google XML Sitemaps and SEO

We are often asked about XML sitemaps and how they can help your SEO efforts. To less tech-savvy internet users an XML sitemap can often look like an incomprehensible load of code. So what does an XML sitemap actually do?

When you have a particularly large website (i.e. hundreds, if not thousands of pages), it may take search engines such as Google a few visits to your site before they have spidered through all of your pages. If your website has an inefficient navigation system, or there are too many levels of categories, this can take even longer – Google may even never spider all of your pages at all. An XML sitemap basically provides Google a single page containing the address of every page in your site.

The page is written using the XML markup language as it provides an well-formed, agreed standard that search engines can read through without problems sometimes associated with HTML links (e.g. JavaScript-built, styling, etc.). It also provides the option of including more information about individual URLs, such as when it was last updated and how often the page changes:


<url>
<loc>http://www.domain.com/example-page.html</loc>
<lastmod>2008-06-16</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
</url>


One particular advantage of creating an XML sitemap is that Google offer the ability to submit them through Google Webmaster Tools. This makes it more likely that new pages of your website will be indexed quickly. And the more pages you have indexed, the more content can be returned to searchers, increasing traffic to your website.

Rik
SEO Programmer