A simple, yet very effective way to increase traffic to you website is to have a sitemap. So what is a sitemap and how do you submit it to the search engines?
A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on aweb site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site. – Wikipedia
Site maps can improve search engine optimization of a site by making sure that all the pages can be found. This is an important point. 70% of all contractor websites do not utilize this simple strategy! I say this from experience working with a large number of contractors who have either built their own websites or who have had companies build them in the past.
So how can you take advantage of having a sitemap on your website?
5 Simple Steps to Submitting a Sitemap
- Get a Google username. If you aren’t already signed up for Gmail, I would strongly suggest you do so now. Having a Gmail account allows access not only to their email program, but a whole plethora of web services such as, Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, AdSence, Google Local, etc. You can sign up for your Gmail account here.
- Create a sitemap. This is as easy as going to XML-Sitemaps.com Entering your website address in the form, downloading the generated sitemap and uploading it to your web server or website hosting account.
- Submit your sitemap to Google. With your Google username and password, log on to Google’s Webmaster Tools and add your site. During the process, you will be asked to enter the location of your sitemap usually it will be something like “http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml” (replace yoursite.com with your website’s address)
- Submit to Yahoo - Yahoo Site Explorer works on the similar lines as that of Google Webmasters Tool. Sign up, add a site, verify your website & add your sitemap as a feed. Hereby, Yahoo’s searchbot can have access to your sitemap.xml file.
Visit Yahoo Site Explorer at http://www.siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com - Ping the Search Engines – Copy and paste the following URL’s and remember to change the YourSite.com to your website’s address.
- Ping Google – http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://www.YourSite.com/sitemap.xml
- Ping Yahoo – http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification appid=YahooDemo&url=http://www.YourSite.com/sitemap.xml
- Ping Bing – http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.YourSite.com/sitemap.xml
- Ping Ask – http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.YourSite.com/sitemap.xml
- Ping Moreover – http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://www.YourSite.com/feed.xml
Take these simple steps to increase traffic to your website!
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Here’s to your success!