Increased Traffic with an XML Sitemap Generator

My little sister has decided to start her own business. She loves to crochet, and has created some of the cutest hats and headbands that I have ever seen. She wants her business to grow, so with a little help from one of her friends, she has designed a website that she is using to promote her business. However, my little sister knows very little about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and what it takes to get her company highly ranked with search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Luckily for her, I have a small idea of what happens behind the scenes at Google, and I am more than willing to help my favorite sister out, especially if it means that I will get a couple of headbands for free. The first thing that my sister (and you, as well) need to know about is how the major search engines like Google work.

On the front end, an individual types into the search box the phrase that they are looking for and almost instantly hundreds of websites pop up which pertain to that specific keyword or phrase. For instance, yesterday my husband and I were discussing Mazda’s rotary engine. He wanted to show me a diagram of how a rotary engine works, so he typed “rotary engine Mazda” into Google search, and instantly, hundreds of websites popped up. None of them were what we were looking for, but the point is that Google knew what we wanted from those simple words and was able to give us more webpages on the subject than we could possibly look at in one day.

On the back end of that search something quite different was happening. As soon as my husband typed in “rotary engine Mazda”, Google was rummaging through its index of the internet. You see, every so often, Google (or Yahoo or Bing) will send out what they call “crawlers”, which index every internet page they are allowed to see. (There are certain ways to make sure that your pages aren’t being indexed by the major search engines, but this is not recommended if you are the owner of a business and are trying to promote that business.) They connect pages where there are links involved and list all of the pages in categories depending on the words that it can see on the page. Then the crawler will give each page a ranking according to how valuable it is.

The more valuable the page is, the higher the ranking it is given by the search engine. However, it doesn’t matter how valuable your pages are if the search engine’s crawler has categorized your pages incorrectly. If your site on rotary engines is incorrectly categorized as being part of a train, then no one is actually going to find your site. Likewise, if all my sister talks about on her site is different types of yarn, she might be categorized incorrectly and she will only get traffic from people that are looking for more yarn, not people who are looking for crocheted hats.

There is a good way to eliminate this problem, however, and that is with an xml sitemap generator. I like to think about the xml sitemap generator in this way: the xml sitemap generator is like well, a map. It is going to categorize all of your webpages correctly. It does this with your help, of course, but the time spent using it is very beneficial to you. You see, if you have an xml sitemap generator, you don’t have to worry about the crawlers categorizing your site incorrectly. When they come knocking at the door of your website, your xml sitemap generator will be able to hand it the map of all of the pages of the site in the correct categories. Having an xml sitemap generator is one of the best tools on your path to high search engine rankings. Now I just need to convince my sister to put one on her website, and then I will be able to enjoy my new hats while she enjoys increased internet traffic.