Most SEO campaigns, after goal defining, begin with initial keyword research. The second step of a good website planning is developing a sitemap. A good sitemap is essential. Without it you will flounder around, creating pages here and there, not quite going in any specific direction, possibly duplicating previous ideas, creating an unstructured linking system, veering off topic, and simply getting off track.
What is a sitemap?
Many web developers would describe the sitemap as the one page on a website with links to every page on the entire site. This is true, and the sitemap page is a very important piece of a website. But before that, you have the sitemap in its raw form, the actual mapping out of the site piece by piece, an integral part of successful website planning. If thought out, researched, and developed properly, the sitemap will turn the large task of creating a website from the ground up into a logical, straightforward process; and ultimately increase your visitor’s experience.
After doing some initial keyword research, and defining some long tail keywords you would like to target throughout your site, you can begin to form your sitemap. I’m a visual person, so when I develop a sitemap, I draw it out on a big piece of paper, my main site concept keyword in the center, with spokes shooting out, and long tail keywords at the end.
Before I even begin researching and writing content, there are at least 15 long tail keywords, with descent search volume, shooting out from my main site concept. Then one by one I start knocking them down; researching and writing each page’s content.
I often find during the research for each page, that a few of my long tails will support long tails of their own. So I then add some spokes coming off of that concept with their long tail keywords, and research and create the content. As you can see, developing a sitemap in this manner is brainstorming at its best.
A sitemap will help to lead you thought the website planning process; and it will eventually lead your site visitors through your site in a logical manner. It will also lead Googlebot easily through your site providing it with the keywords and phrases necessary for proper indexing and placement in the search engines.
