In my last post, I discussed the value of a sitemap for visitors to your site. Now, let’s take a minute to look at XML sitemaps. This type of sitemap is not intended for human visitors to your site, but rather for search engine spiders.

An XML sitemap lists out the pages of your site, along with hierarchical and date information. Click on the thumbnail to the right to see what the sitemap for Wittmania.com looks like this when viewed in a browser. However, when a search engine spider accesses the XML sitemap it sees a great deal of information about the pages in your site, in an organized and concise presentation. This ensures that the spiders don’t miss important site content when they index your site’s content. If content isn’t indexed, it won’t be included in search results.

As you might expect, I include an XML sitemap with every website I create. If you have questions about how to create an XML sitemap for your small business website, let me know.