So what’s this thing called a Google Sitemap? Simple, it’s a map of all the pages on a website, by URL. Almost like a street map only in that a sitemap is an XML file containing the layout of your website, with links and all. The intention is to provide search engine spiders like Google and Yahoo an easy roadmap of your website by giving “directions” on where to crawl and index.

Creating a sitemap is pretty simple. If you have a small website – under 500 pages – visit http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ for free sitemap creation. For bigger websites, I use the Vigos Gsitemap, which you can download for free at http://www.vigos.com/products/gsitemap/.

The question then becomes, do I even need a sitemap? In most cases I would say it can’t hurt. Then again there are stories of those people who lost search engine rankings once they submitted a sitemap.

That said, if you have a new site, not yet fully indexed in Google or Yahoo, go ahead I would go down that road and get one done. Now if you already have an established website that ranks fairly well and remains pretty static, you probably don’t need one. If you are somewhere in between, then it’s really up to you. Adding a sitemap to an existing site is not going to dramatically improve your rankings. It’s really there for informational purposes.

Once created, you can submit a sitemap via Google’s Webmaster Tools and Yahoo’s Site Explorer. I believe you’ll need to register for both, but it’s free and both provide additional and often useful information about your website(s).