SEO (Search Engine Optimization) sitemaps are helpful in improving a website's page ranking with a search engine. It's purpose is to help search engines better find and read web sites

Search engines, such as Google, maintain a database of web pages and files. They use a web crawler or spider to do this. It continually surfs and looks at content on websites. When the spider finds a page, it cross indexes it according to the content and gives 'weight' according to the items on the page, including finding header and subheader tags. Spiders navigate constantly from page to page, using links from one page to another within a site. They are also looking at meta data, including your meta tags to correctly index your pages.

When a person types a query into a search engine, the words are checked against the search engine's database, and then returns a list based on those words.

SEO uses content and headings, keyword analysis, smart codes, and link popularity as some of the things it uses to place a particular result in a search engine. Pages displayed at the top of the results page are assumed to get the most attention and in turn, become more profitable for the website owner with increased traffic and various sales opportunities.

The number of other sites linked to a website also play an important part. Results may be classed as organic, or sponsored links. These are shown prominently because the owners paid the search engine to have them displayed. This is the main revenue source for the search engine. These results are lists of results from the search engine index and directly related to the words typed into a search engine by a user.

An effective technique in SEO is to place a site map on a website. All of the pages on the website are directly linked to the sitemap, making it simple for the spiders to find their way through the website, identify content and keywords and complete their indexing.

Site maps are normally lists or tables of links, with lists being best for search engines. Writing code for SEO sitemaps is simple to construct and maintain, as they are HTML pages with tags, titles and keywords in the meta description. Introductions can be added which contain more keywords. Headings should be used for every directory. Keeping the layout simple prevents extra tags cluttering up your page.

Many search engines weight the following well. Heading text, then content with links and this applies to site maps, so the first section of the site map should be the first navigation link.

In a site map, keywords should be added to the titles and any text as much as possible. Web links should follow web page titles. However, keyword stuffing is not well regarded, so the overuse of keywords must be avoided to not be interpreted as spamming.

Even with a good sitemap, logical site navigation, appropriate headlines, subheadings and keywords, is no guarantee a website will get a top ranking in an organic search for any period of time. Smart SEO sitemap techniques can help place a website highly in the search position, but monitoring and adjustment of the sitemap will help to ensure a good ranking for a longer period of time. Which of course, means more traffic and ultimately more profit for you, the website owner.

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