Getting ‘organic’ traffic to your website is a very challenging task; which is good and bad at the same time. It is good because it ensures that only the best websites feature on the top of SERPs, ensuring web surfers get access to quality and fresh information. On the other hand, website owners don’t like it because they have to compete with close to a billion other sites with their eyes focused on the medal; high rankings in the search engines. Competition is actually good, because it gives everyone a chance to outsmart the other, including websites. You can really make large strides by simply using a website mapping tool to create sitemaps.

However whatsoever be the case, it is the dream of every website owner to ensure that his or her sites makes it to the top of the search engines. Certain technical aspects should also be taken into consideration which essentially includes XML and HTML Sitemapping. HTML site mapping usually plays double roles; on one hand it allows the crawlers to crawl a website effectively and on the other hand it allows the visitors to have an easy access to your web content. As far as indexing of your pages is concerned, sitemaps allow better management of your web pages for indexing purpose.

You can however only enjoy the above benefits if you create a sitemap that is effective based on the following attributes.

XML Document Must Lie In The Root Directory

Make it a mandatory practice to make an XML document which contains links to all the pages of your website. Special care must be taken when placing the document as it should always lie in the root folder.

Regular Updating

It is to be ensured that the XML file is regularly updated, at least on a monthly basis. Every time you add a new page or remove any, you must update the XML document. If a page is removed and the XML file is not updated the crawlers might get to a dead end resulting in a failed or incomplete crawling, such errors are not good for future crawling. Some website mapping tools can effectively handle this for you.

Maintain A Robots.txt File

The ‘robots.txt’ file is highly recommended because it guides search engines on which pages shouldn’t be crawled. This means that you only let the information you want to be found and block what you don’t want.

Use both HTML and XML Sitemaps

You should ensure that your site has both the XML and the HTML sitemaps for the search engines and the users’ respectively. Creating both is rather easy and straightforward to even novices because you can always use a website mapping tool.

To a large extend, sitemaps are good for SEO too. The more content on your site is indexed, the better your placement in the SERPs. Therefore, have a sitemap on your site, generate fresh content and update your sitemap. With most of your content visible online, you stand a high chance of attracting more traffic and ranking better in your target keywords.