Step 2 - Create a Sitemap

A sitemap (also spelled site map) graphically displays the architecture of your website.   It can inform your site's visitors as well as search engine crawlers about all of the great landing pages you have within your site.  More... 

Part of ESPN.com's HTML sitemap

Now, there are two types of sitemaps - HTML and XML.  An HTML sitemap is, simply put, a list of anchored text links (as shown above) constructed on the front end and organized like a "table of contents" to help you users navigate your site. 

      Get an XML Sitemap

On the other hand, an XML Sitemap is meta code created and loaded on the back end, seen only by search crawlers and not by front-end users.  For this step, we will be focusing on the XML Sitemap (the capital "S" means that it's XML and that it's supported by the Sitemaps Protocol).  More...

Top 7 Reasons to have a Sitemap

1.  Helps you get more of your landing pages indexed

2.  Gets crawlers to follow more of your page links

3.  Assists visitors in finding your content more efficiently

4.  Works extremely well for sites with fewer standard HTML links, e.g. sites using lots of Flash, Ajax, or JavaScript menus

5.  Great for large, dynamic websites 

6.  Useful for new sites that don't have that many links

7.  You are able to incorporate your target keywords, and keyword relatives, in the hyperlinks of your Sitemap 

Major Search Engines Support Sitemaps