What are the benefits of having a sitemap for my website?

1. No page would be left unturned

Returning to the aim of sitemaps, having one would mean faster and easier tracking and crawling of spiders all over your site. As a consequence, search engines would certainly get to the view all the pages of your site and not merely the pages containing random keywords.

2. Easier navigation for site visitors

Once a web user has accessed your sitemap, they need not return to the search engine page to search for what they need. If what they are searching for is in your site, then they would have an easier and faster method of locating it.

3. Potential advertising value

If it so happens that a relevant product or service company arrives at your site, then it would be easier for them to see how best they can position themselves in the different pages of your site as a paid page advertisement.

4. Encourage greater traffic to your site

If your company website has a sitemap then potential buyers would have an easier time in accessing your latest products and services. Furthermore, they would not miss out on any product that might be off future interest to them because the sitemap would exhibit all information found on the site.

How are sitemaps formatted?

There are at least three major types of sitemaps: indexed, full categorical, and restricted categorical. An indexed site map appears as an alphabetical listing or directory. A full categorical map shows all links classified into categories; whilst a restricted categorical sitemap displays all links listed in a selected category at a time. The full and restricted sitemaps are very alike except that the former reveals all links in all categories all at once in a page, while the latter focuses only on the links under the selected category for easier and less eye-straining viewing.

The most widely employed format is the full categorical. Based on the results of a 1999 SURL study on sitemap designs, the full categorical format is the most favoured by users since it is easier to search for topics within the site and it allows for easier comparison between and amongst categories.

This concludes part 2 of this series, part three will deal with designing a sitemap.

As always feel free to comment or even subscribe to the feed.

Related posts:

1. Sitemaps 101 (Part 3 0f 3)
2. Sitemaps 101 (part 1 of 3)
3. The Importance Of A Sitemap When Designing A Website

Most webmasters know that Adsense generates a sizeable source of additional advertising income. That is why most of them use it to go after high paying keywords. They have with them the lists that tells what the keywords are and have already used various methods of identifying them. And yet, after putting up these supposed-to-be high paying keywords into their pages, the money they expected to come rolling in is not really coming in.

What is it that they are doing wrong?

Having the pages is with the proper keywords is one thing. But driving visitors to those pages is another matter and often the factor that is lacking.

The thing is, to get visitors to your high paying keyword pages, you need to optimize your site navigation.

Stop for a moment and think about how visitors are using your website. After a visitor has landed on a certain page, they have the tendency to click on another page that sounds interesting. They get there because of the other links that appears on a page that they initially landed on. This is site navigation. It is all about enabling visitors to move about your site. And one way of maximizing your Adsense earnings.

A typical website have menu links on each page. The wording on these links is what grabs a visitor’s attention and gets them to click on one of the links that will take them to another page of that website. Links that have “free’ or “download” are oftentimes good attention-grabbers.

This navigation logic can also be applied to driving traffic to your high paying pages. There are some websites that are getting a lot of traffic from search engines, but have low earnings. The trick is to try and use come cleverly labeled links to get the visitors off that pages and navigate them to the higher earning ones. This is one great way of turning real cheap clicks to real dollars.

Before you begin testing if this same style will work for you and you website, you need to have two things. Something to track and compare and some high earning pages you want to funnel your site traffic to. An option is to select a few of your frequently visited pages. This is ensuring fast result to come by.

Now, the next thing to do is think of ways to get visitors viewing a particular page to try and click on the link that will take them to your high earning pages. Come up with a catchy description for that link. Come up with a catchy and unique description for the link. Think of something that people do not get to see everyday. That will trigger their curiosity enough to try and see what that was all about.

You can also use graphics to grab your readers’ attention. There is no limitation to what you can do to make your link noticeable. If you are after the success of your site, you will do everything it takes just to achieve that goal. Just be creative. As far as many Adsense advertisers are concerned, there are no written and unwritten laws to follow regarding what they write. Just as long as you do not overstep the guidelines of the search engines, then go for it.

Also remember that it is all about location, location and location. Once the perfect attention grabbing description has been achieved, you have to identify the perfect spot on your page to position that descriptive link to your high paying page.

There is nothing wrong with visiting other websites to see how they are going about maximizing their site navigation. “Hot pages” or “Most read” lists are very common and overly used already. Get to know the ones that many websites are using and do not try to imitate them.

Another way of doing it is to try and use different texts on different pages. That way you will see the ones that work and what does not. Try to mix things around also. Put links on top and sometimes on the bottom too. This is how you go about testing which ones get more clicks and which ones are being ignored.

Let the testing begin. Testing and tracking until you find the site navigation style that works best for you site.

Related posts:

1. 5 Ways To Improve Your Adsense Earnings
2. Turning Traffic in to Adsense Traffic
3. Monetizing Your Website With Adsense Is Profitable!