You have been finding out from us what are some important elements to get people on your site, how to build great content, and now we are going to talk about how to organize it in a sitemap.
You might have been wondering for some time which is the best way to make people search for more information on your site.
Well, that is an easy one, you need a clear navigation path for your readers. Making sure that your site has a clean walkthrough is established through your sitemap.
In this article, we will talk more about why a site map is important, how it can be done and a few principles to help you along the way.
Understanding that besides building great content you need to take the time to get everything sorted out in your sitemap will pay off from a Bot and Human standpoint.
Getting all this done in a logical fashion will make it easier for your future work as well. Having a clear structure will also give a holistic view of your content.
Why focus on a Sitemap?
A sitemap is a list of pages of a website accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for Web design or a Web page that lists the pages on a site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion.
Building one
There a number of protocols but I do recommend you the XML schema. If you want to build it manually, use the helping information form sitemaps.org.
This will make sure that the structure of your website will be understood by Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Of course, the other formats are expected by the search engines but there is also the possibility that problems will appear.
If you’re taking care of your own site and writing all that code doesn’t quite come in handy you can use a site to generate the XML Site map and then just submit it to Google through your Webmaster account.
Squirrly, our WordPress SEO plugin can also help you take care of this task faster than you think.
Keep in mind
As I promised at the start of this articles I will present a few principles that you should keep in mind when building your site map in order to make it work for a long time for your site.
- Put your buy persona first
As I have presented in an older article, you need to get to know your audience and establish what each group needs from you. This is called establishing the buyer persona, that uses your site or blog.
When building a site you should start from them and understand which is the flow you want to take them through in order to get to the end result they were searching for.
So the main structure of the Sitemap should be determined to buy the number of buyer persona you have identified and they different navigations paths.
- Navigation should be intuitive not simple
Now don’t get me wrong. I am not promoting very complicated site maps that have weird connection between pages and information. You have to focus on creating an environment that is that necessary simple, but rather one that is easy to access for them.
Meaning that the logic that you find the site, might not concise with the one that your visitors have. Walk a mile in their shoes to make sure that it makes sense for them or ask a few of them and use their feedback.
- Make it adaptable for the future
You need to understand the evolution of your site before you pin down a sitemap. It would be best that the structure of your site doesn’t change to often as your user appreciate a sense of consistency.
They might also bookmark different pages for future reference and if you change the structure too often this will mean that will not find the same info again.
Make sure you know where future articles, updates to pages and other elements will be integrated in the site map before they are even created.
Organized information has a higher rate of retention
In the end, you need to remember that Sitemaps help you in your SEO work in many different ways. They help Bot better understand your site and there for index it better.
It is also an important element for your user in order to get more information on the different subject from multiple pages on your site.
If you need any other information about Sitemap or want to tell us how you have build your own, please leave a comment bellow.
