Is a sitemap really that important?

First...is a sitemap really that important...or just another distraction?

Second...how do you create one easily? update?

Third...where does it go? submit to Google? how?

Thanks.

If you're using Wordpress, there's a plugin that will create the sitemap for you: Dagon Design Sitemap Generator.

You install the plugin, create a page called "sitemap", add <!-- ddsitemapgen --> IN THE HTML editor, and you're done. For good.

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Originally Posted by rhelling

First...is a sitemap really that important...or just another distraction?

Thanks.

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I'll attempt an answer to your first question.... whether "a sitemap is really important... or just another distraction"?

First... there are many free ways to create a sitemap online.... just Google it and take your choice. Read a little and you'll know how to create it...

A sitemap is important if you have a larger, authority type site with many pages. You'll want Google to spider your site so it can be added to its index.

But, if you have a one-page website... which is termed a squeeze page with an opt-in, which is a page where you send traffic to, of your choosing, you do not need, nor would it benefit you to have a sitemap.

Best of Luck to You

Cliff

There are two kinds of sitemaps -- One for your readers and one for the search engines. As for your readers, you have to decide whether they would find a directory of your site helpful. A good place to put a sitemap is on your 404 page so that if someone gets lost, they have a directory to continue on your site rather than getting frustrated.

The one for the search engines is important because Google says it is. :) A plugin will make this easy. If you use the Yoast SEO plugin called WordPress SEO, it will build this search engine sitemap for you automatically.

I tend to think that navigational sitemaps for users don't really benefit the users of big sites. Take Apples sitemap, for instance at http://www.apple.com/sitemap/. I can't see anyone looking through that thing, when the nav bar at the top is going to get 99% of people on the right track.

As Christine said, the sitemap that you create for search engines (an XML Sitemap) is important, and you should definitely have one of those.

1. Yes its important and its another way to let search engines know about all your pages.
2. there is sevral tools on the net to create sitemap (xml-sitemaps,sitemapx). I personally made a simple php script that check the database and update the sitemap.xml file and update a cron job for it each week, so it gets update each week.
3.
a. you need to have Bing & Google Webmasters tools and there you will be able to submit your sitemap.
b. you should name it sitemap.xml and the search engines should be able to find it automaticlly.