No Site Map

The Why

Site maps are at the core of SEO design. They normally link from your homepage/index page and contain a link to all of your websites internal pages. This makes it very easy for the search engines to craw your site and index all of your pages. Sad as it is, I've seen some sites that do not utilize site maps.

I can't fathom why you wouldn't take advantage of them other than just simply not knowing how important they can be for your website. Not only do they "guide" the search engines to all of your pages they give your visitors an easy navigational system of your entire site. Do it for that reason if no other.

A Site Map Should

1.  Be linked to from every page on your site, especially your index page.

2.  Use the keywords of the page you are linking to in the anchor text.
3.  Provide a link to every page of the site.
4.  Be used as a redirect page for any 404 page errors also known as dead links.
5.  Not use JavaScript.  Search engine crawlers can have a more difficult time seeing JavaScript.  Make sure that the links are created as plain text links!

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