If You Build It, Google Will Index It
Let’s talk about Sitemaps. Not the pretty, user-friendly kind like this or that, but the ugly, albeit necessary “XML” kind. If you don’t know what an XML Sitemap is, then you better get someone who does.
They’re not too difficult to create but have become increasingly important for getting all of a website’s pages into Google’s index. Consider these findings, revealed by Google at a recent industry event in Madrid (and highlighted by Search Engine Land):
- · 78% of Web pages were revealed to Google via an XML Sitemap vs. Google’s usual method of discovery by web crawler
- · For most web sites, publishing an XML Sitemap and submitting it to Google has the effect of getting a higher % of that’s site’s pages into Google’s index
Using XML Sitemaps results in more pages of your website on Google, and therefore the more of a chance your website has to rank.