SEO - Sitemap For Search Engine Optimization

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization is the process of enhancing the visibility of a website on search engine listings. It refers to a list of marketing tools required to arrange a website in order to increase its rankings in the context of the result of pages of search engines and directories.

There are two main types of factors in search engine optimization:

1. On page Optimization 2. Off Page Optimization

I was working in the field of search engine optimization from last three years, when I started optimizing sites there was not so many terms related with it. In my very first day at office my seniors taught me that doing optimization is getting back links for website. Back links with proper anchor text. At the end of the day I was satisfied that generating back links are only some thing which can optimize a website.

After completing three years in this field now I am well aware that only back links are not at all optimization of the websites. Now there are so many people who use to learn the techniques of search engine optimization from me. I guide them about both the ON page and OFF page factors of search engine optimization.

In ON page factor, there are something’s which is related to your own website and in OFF page factor, there are something’s which is related to the websites which are not yours. In ON page we use to do Meta Tag Optimization, proper content for the website, Alt tag optimization for the website, proper navigation for the website and much more activities through which we do changes in the websites. In OFF page factor we create back links for our website.

Sitemap is something which came in existence a few year’s back. People thought it’s a tool through which they can optimize their websites. In fact sitemap is an easy tool through which a site owner can inform search engines about the pages of their websites. Through sitemap people can create an index of the pages of their websites which are required for crawling by search engines. A sitemap can be created in XML format. This page will list the pages of the websites along with some Meta data for each of the URL’s which is listed in sitemap. These data can contain Change frequency, Last modification Time, and the priority of the page. Due to all these data, search engines can crawl more intelligently.

Sitemap is useful just because it contains all the information regarding all the pages of the websites at a single page. Hence, search engines can gather all the information regarding the website from a single page and due to this they crawl each page of the websites regularly.

Benefits of On Page Search Engine Optimization:

When creating or updating a commercial website it should be taken into consideration that the products are made more attractive for the viewers. At the same time it must be taken into account that the ability o gain more exposure with a broader target audience has its own benefits. Most websites need to reach out to a larger target audience in order to enhance their business. On Page Optimization allows a higher page ranking and based on a specific keyword or phrases they enter. This process identifies those keywords that will benefit a particular website and uses them in such a way that it gets a higher page ranking when those keywords are searched.

Most searchers only use first page displayed websites on their searches because this is where the pages with higher page rankings are displayed, which translates into these pages find the highest relevance to their keyword searches. This makes it even more vital that each website comprehends the significance and the knowledge necessary to adapt their websites to benefit from Search Engine Optimization.

Google advises against using more than 100 links on a page, many SEO advise no more than 50, and against having pages of more than 100 Kbytes in length. It seems that Google will index more than 100 links but it may take repeated visits to the page. Some search engines may not spider to the end of a long page. This poses a problem for large sites. First of all the site map should be more than just a series of links. Use headings (H1, H2, H3 etc.) to divide the links into themed areas and use your topic keywords in those headings. If your site is well structured this will probably follow the existing themes. If the map grows too large place topic areas into separate sub-site maps. This increases the depth of the site map so more important links should be on the main map but it is better to add depth to the sitemap than risk search engines giving up due to the quantity of links.