Why a Sitemap Leads to Increased Traffic

In the old days – before everyone had a GPS in their smartphone – travelers had to make do with paper maps that could never be folded correctly; or on the kindness of strangers and gas station attendants to point them in the right direction.

Finding directions these days is as simple as inputting an address into a map app and getting step by step information. It’s almost impossible to get lost. 

The same idea can be applied to your website. It needs to be laid out in a manner that’s intuitive, and provides visitors with a well thought out route so they can find the page they want with the click of a button.

The other challenge is making sure that search engines can find your site, and then crawl through each page, video, and file so they can be properly indexed. Once that’s complete, you’ll see your search engine rankings improve.

This can all be accomplished by having a sitemap in place that’s easily accessible to these search engines. There are several different types of sitemaps which you can use, and each plays a different role.

The most common variety is an XML sitemap – it’s automatically generated by the content management system that has been used to build your site. 

There is also a news sitemap that helps search engines parse and then understand the news content on your site. 

For example, if you have a dog grooming service, and your site contains stories about pet care, grooming ideas, or other related topics, search engines will identify them and boost your results.

Video and image sitemaps help search engines locate and understand these types of files and then catalog them so potential clients can find what they’re looking for on your site.

It goes without saying that a sitemap is vital to your success, and it can be a significant help if your website falls into these categories:

• Your site contains a large archive of content pages that aren’t linked to each other. It’s a common occurrence, and a sitemap can make sure Google and other search engines don’t miss any vital information.

• A new site might not have enough internal links, and because search engines crawl websites following links from page to page, they can skip over multiple pages.

• You may have a great deal of videos and images located on your website, and a sitemap can help Google find those resources and incorporate those pages into search results.

Work with Pink Dog Digital

As you can see an accurate and comprehensive sitemap plays a pivotal role in your website’s success – and when it’s paired with a strategic SEO plan, you’ll see increased traffic to your site.

More visitors lead to more clicks, and that leads to increased business and new clients.

Pink Dog can create an accurate and comprehensive sitemap for your website, and provide insight into best practices, and how to synchronize it with your other marketing plans.

We’ll help you get where you want to go. 

Call us at (410) 696-3305 to see how we can take your social media presence to the next level.