Sitemaps In Webmaster Tools

One of the most important tools to have in SEO is Google’s own webmaster tools. Originally this was called Google sitemaps but over time, more and more useful tools has been added and so now is know as webmaster tools. However this article is about the sitemaps part itself and the benefits is can have when trying to get Google to recognise and list your pages within a website.

Fist of all you should not confuse a sitemap made for Google with a sitemap page that is often added to websites to help your visitors get to their chosen page fast, although the version we are talking about, helps Google find your pages faster.

A Google sitemap is created in XML format and is loaded up on to the server within your root folder. You then register with webmaster tools, tell them where this sitemap is located on your site and wait for webmaster tools to find the sitemap.

The benefits of doing this are, that Google will find your pages quicker; it will also highlight any errors your site have, this can be especially effective for new sites and sites that have pages several layers deep, that normal spiders by Google may struggle to find.

On of the fist things a SEO company will do when working on a new site or new client, is to make sure that site is registered with webmaster tools and a sitemap set up. If after some time, certain pages are still not being listed by Google, there is a god chance there is something weak about those pages, like duplicate content or not enough content. Even pages that are of a similar content to others on the site may find themselves not listed.

As you can be pretty sure that Google knows about the pages as they were entered on the sitemap, you can then concluded that there must be a reason Google does not like the pages and react accordingly. As you site grows you should continue to add these pages also to your sitemap, to keep Google informed.

There are many other features with webmaster tools, but I will talk about them in later posts.