Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Sitemap: Informs Search Engines About Pages

Web Logo with Magnifying Glass


All of you are familiar with maps. City Map, World Map etc. etc. But how many of you know about sitemap? Though it's a very common term to the webmasters, general people hardly know about this. Even new bloggers are not conscious about sitemap. The fact is that it's an important part of SEO. Let's take a brief idea on Sitemap.


Well a sitemap is something like City Map! What does a city map tell you? You can find the park, bus stand, university or any other important places from the map. From a World Map, you can find the nations of the world. Similarly, a sitemap includes the posts or pages of a blog or website.


Simply a sitemap can be defined as a list of pages of a site. A sitemap gives access search engines to crawl those pages. And it also let the visitors easily navigate throughout the site. If you submit your site's map to search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc.) then it will be easier to index the site. Search position of the site will also be improved.


Search engines can't index the pages of your site if you don't submit the sitemap regularly. Crawlers discover pages from your site and also from backlinks. Sitemap boosts up the process. It provides additional information about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes etc.) and thus makes it easier for the search engines to crawl a site properly.


Look at the following URL:

https://www.markspcsolution.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

If you follow the URL, you will get the sitemap of Marks PC Solution. There you will find all the URL(s) of this site with some additional information. Let's have a look at the first few lines of the sitemap -

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><?xml-stylesheet href="http://www.blogger.com/styles/atom.css" type="text/css"?><feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' xmlns:openSearch='http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/' xmlns:blogger='http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008' xmlns:georss='http://www.georss.org/georss' xmlns:gd="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005" xmlns:thr='http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0'><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2515880289700454211</id><updated>2013-10-29T22:07:36.199+06:00</updated><category term="Tips n Tricks"/><category term="Tutorial"/><category term="Microsoft"/><category term="Internet"/><category term="Blogging"/><category term="Windows"/><category term="Software"/><category term="Troubleshooting"/><category term="Download"/><category term="SEO"/><category term="Good to Know"/><category term="Security"/><category term="Hardware"/><category term="Tech News"/><category term="Web Development"/><category term="Uncategorized"/><category term="HTML Tutorial"/><category term="Blogging Tips"/><category term="Alexa"/><category term="Facebook"/><category term="Gaming"/><category term="Troubleshooting."/><category term="Windows 8"/><category term="Blogger"/><category term="IT News"/><category term="Alexa Rank"/><category term="Antivirus"/><category term="Blogger Tips"/><category term="Google"/><category term="Windows 8 Download"/><category term="Windows 8 Features"/><category term="Windows 8 Tips"/><category term="Windows 8 activator"/><category term="blogger widget"/><category term="Adobe Reader"/><category term="Alexa Ranking"/><category term="Apple News"/><category term="Backlinks"/><category term="Basic Parts of HTML Form"/><category term="Computer"/><category term="Copyright"/><category term="Download Windows 8"/><category term="Dxdiag"/><category term="Excel Tips"/><category term="Firefox"/><category term="Foxit Reader"/><category term="Google +"/><category term="Google AdSense Tips"/><category term="Google Calculator"/><category term="How can I see my computer&#39;s information"/><category term="How to remove facebook timeline"/><category term="Internet Tools"/><category term="MS Word Shortcuts"/><category term="MS Word Tips"/><category term="Microsoft Office"/><category term="Mobile"/><category term="Office 2010 activator"/><category term="PDF viewer"/><category term="Paging File"/><category term="Password Reset Disk"/><category term="USB Flash Drive"/><category term="Virtual Memory"/><category term="Windows 8 Tricks"/><category term="YouTube Video Downloader"/><category term="activate windows 8 developer preview"/><category term="alexa toolbar"/><category term="basic HTML document structure"/><category term="how to check password strength"/><category term="notepad tricks"/><category term="password security"/><category term="remove facebook timeline"/><category term="*#06#"/><category term=".net framework 3.5"/><category term="10 GB Storage for Gmail users"/><category term="10 Years of AdSense"/><category term="12 most used facebook shortcuts"/><category term="12 useful tips for blog post writing"/><category term="32-bit Vs. 64-bit Windows"/><category term="5G Network Technology"/><category term="99counters"/><category term="A to Z Shortcuts."/><category term="AMOLED"/><category term="Acer Product"/>

Note: If you follow my sitemap URL - https://www.markspcsolution.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500 - different browsers may display this differently. If you view the link in Chrome, you will see the above XML file.  

In my next post, I will show an easy way to create a sitemap even without coding knowledge.

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