How to Get the Best From XML Sitemaps
Last Edited May 7, 2015 by Super User in Sitemaps
We have over a billion websites in the world today. This means that competition for higher ranking in SERPs is in huge demand today. Website owners are desperate for first page ranking and better brand recognition. There are far too many SEO strategies anyone can turn to, but the truth of the matter is that, no one is guaranteed a better rank in SERPs, especially with the dynamic nature of the web. You have to be the best at what you are doing to move through the ranks. Before your website content is discovered by web surfers, the search engines have to crawl the pages and present the information in an orderly manner to users, this is where XML sitemaps come in. You can use a website mapping tool link DYNO Mapper for this purpose.
Better Navigation
Sitemaps are basically used to enable users to navigate different pages of a website. Other than that, they are also ideal for search engines optimization because of their role in linking all the pages. Crawlers have to find the content, which actually is one of the principles behind SEO. Note that there are many SEO strategies available, and therefore you have to think beyond sitemaps if you are to attain better rankings.
One of the main reasons why XML sitemaps are recommended is that they share a common language with search engine crawlers, making it easier for the content to be deciphered whenever the crawlers come across them. You can still monitor your website’s statistics from Google to understand the nature of information the search engine has about your site.
Prioritize Pages
For effective understanding of your site, you can prioritize various pages based on the significance of the content by allocating values on a scale of 0 to 1 with the default value being 0.5. Put differently, the sitemap makes it possible to guide the search engines on which pages you deem more important than the others and therefore should be indexed fast. Setting these values is not difficult with the aid of a website mapping tool like DYNO Mappper that lets you make a sitemap.
Good for SEO
On SEO, the sitemap is very important. You get a chance to view feedback from the search engines on what information has been indexed from the website. In the event that some errors were encountered during the crawling process, this information will be displayed. You can then view the nature of the error and fix it accordingly. The frequency of the crawling will also be displayed. Of great SEO significance is the ability for the webmaster to view “query stats” that display the searches that resulted in the most clicks to your website.
You can easily monitor which keyword or key phrases and enquiries that led to click through to your website. This is important data that can help you improve the user experience as you know exactly what people were searching for and how they ended up in your website. Armed yourself with this information, you can then improve the content. You should frequently use website mapping tool to modify your XML sitemaps to get the best results.
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Create Visual Sitemaps
Create, edit, customize, and share visual sitemaps integrated with Google Analytics for easy discovery, planning, and collaboration.