A Site Map for the Google Spider

Put simply, a site map is a web page that links to all other web pages on your site. On this page, you use your top 5 keywords and some simple HTML to make sure every single page on your site is linked together. Once done, you submit the site map to Google and it helps the Google spider (the computers that spider -– or crawl –- your web site for web pages) find every page on your site. If done correctly in correlation with everything else that we’ve looked at in this article, a site map will help bring you higher rankings in a shorter period of time. First thing’s first. If you’ve never seen a site map, then take a look at Apple’s site map. See how it’s simply a mass of plain-text links? Anyone can build a site map, however many forget this one important rule:




Always make sure that the descriptions of the links in your site map contain your top 5 keywords in some form or another! For example, which link do you think Google will list higher in its index for the keywords “widget features”? This one:

Features
… or this one:

Widget Features – Size, Shape and
Cost
If you’re answer was the second one then you’re correct. Remember that you MUST include your top 5 keywords in all links to pages on your web site from your site map. It’s now time to build your site map. Start from your home page and write down the full URL (such as http://www.mysite.com/mypage.html) as well as a 4-10 word description for every page on your web site. Remember to include at least 1 of your keywords in each pages description. Here’s an example for a site that sells widgets:

• http://www.widgetsite.com/default.html
Home Page for Our Widgets Site, WidgetSite.com

• http://www.widgetsite.com/widgetfeatures.html
Features of Widgets - Size, Shape, Cost

• http://www.widgetsite.com/widgets.html
Our List of Widgets Including Popular Blue Widgets and Green Widgets

• http://www.widgetsite.com/articlesonwidgets.html
Our Articles On Widgets Including How to Install Widgets

• http://www.widgetsite.com/buy_widgets.html
Buy Our Widgets Online

Once you’ve made this list, you now need to convert them into links and put them up as a page on your site. Your site map doesn’t have to look fancy. It can simply include your logo and each link listed one under another -– Google doesn’t care what it looks like.
Now, take each link that you have written down and build your site map. Here’s an example using the widget links above. I saved this as widget_sitemap.html:


Here’s how the simple site map for WidgetSite.com would look:

<title> WidgetSite.com Site Map </title>
<h1>
Site Map for Our Widget Site, WidgetSite.com</h1>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="http://www.widgetsite.com/default.html">
Home Page for Our Widgets Site, WidgetSite.com</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.widgetsite.com/widget_features.html">
Features of Widgets - Size, Shape, Cost</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.widgetsite.com/widgets.html">
Our List of Widgets Including Popular Blue Widgets and Green
Widgets</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.widgetsite.com/articles_on_widgets.html">
Our Articles On Widgets Including How to Install Widgets</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.widgetsite.com/buy_widgets.html">
Buy Our Widgets Online</a></li>
</ul>


Once you’ve created your site map, you need to make sure that every page on your site
links to it. If you run your site using templates, then it’s simply a matter of editing the
template that contains your menu and including a link there. If not, you will need to
edit each page of your site and include it. Use a link like this:

YourSite Site Map

Finally, you need to submit the URL of your site map to Google. Click here to go to the Google “Add URL” page and submit the link to your site map. In the example above, this link is http://www.yoursite.com/yoursite_sitemap.html.