A sitemap (lower case) is a page on your website that presents the structure of your website. Its purpose is to help visitors to find specific pages they may not be able to find when they are on your site.

An XML Sitemap (upper case) file is used to help the search engines find your site. Google helped to create the open source “Sitemap Generator Script” so that you can create a Sitemap file for your website. This is the Sitemap we will be discussing here.

Having an organized detailed sitemap can help make sure the search engines can easily find and index your website. This is a very essential aspect of SEO. A Sitemap can also be helpful to the search engines by allowing them to find pages quickly that have been recently added.

Search engines love fresh additions to websites. You should organize your Sitemap in the same order as your website structure. Start with the home page and link all the pages back to the home page.

Link all sub pages, including your privacy policy and company info page back to the home page. Name the sitemap either sitemap.html or sitemap.php. This will help the search engines identify this as your sitemap. Once the sitemap is created, link it back to your home page.