With how much the Internet is used nowadays, web sites are changing to accommodate a constantly growing user base. As with any good site, navigation is extremely important. So what can you do to make your web site completely accessible? Two words: site map. If you’re unfamiliar about what a site map is, it’s a web page containing a list of all the pages within a web site. There are many ways to go about creating a site map: you can create it yourself, use a web site designed to generate site maps, or if you’re using WordPress, there’s a wide range of plugins available that will help as well.

Create Your Own Site map for Your Website

When designing a sitemap yourself, it is important to consider writing it in XML. While it is good practice to make your site map in XML, it is not required. Writing it in XML, however, helps web crawlers from search engines keep up-to-date with changes made to your pages easily and accurately. Today, XML is the standard for site maps and is recognized by most (if not all) web crawlers. So if you’re looking to get your web site recognized by a search engine, this is the way to go. It goes without saying that you’ll need a bit of experience with XML in order to make a site map, but it’s not complicated. Do a little research on Google and you’ll be ready to go. The only other thing you’ll need is Notepad and you’ll have your site map made in no time!

Create a Free Site map Online

If your web site is too big and you’re short on time, or you just don’t want to do the work yourself, there are plenty of web sites out there that will do the work for you. One great example is: xml-sitemaps.com. Here, you can create a site map in 10 minutes or less, depending on the sheer size of your web site. Simply type in the URL to your web site and press start. Then, sit back and watch as the automated page query goes to work. You’ll get up to 500 pages in your site map for free! Once finished, you can download your site map in XML and do whatever you want with it.

Site map Plugin for WordPress Blogs and Websites

If you use WordPress for your web site or blog, consider this amazing plugin: Google XML Sitemaps. It is a very complete sitemap plugin for WordPress and one we like to use. It will take care of creating your site map and of updating it automatically when you add new posts. It’s a great little tool and highly necessary for anyone looking to get their pages noticed by web crawlers.

There are many different ways to go about making a site map for your web site, all of which are great ways to increase traffic coming in from search engines. The better you design your site map, the better results you’ll have with web crawlers querying your site for search engines and the more visitors you’ll see.