An XML Sitemap provides a directory of your website specifically for spiders to find all of your content and is a critical element in internet marketing.
Don’t confuse this with the ‘sitemap’ directory often provided so human visitors can view an outline of your website’s structure.
The sitemaps I’m referring to are not designed for humans but for search engine spiders. OK so maybe deep geeks can understand them, but definitely not marketers and other mere mortals 
While they are functionally similar, each form of Sitemap has completely different target audiences.
A Sitemap is made up of a simple form of software called Extensible Markup Language (XML) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML and provides information about each web page including:
- The date of last modification of the web page
- How frequently the page is likely to change
- The priority of the page compared to other URLs in your site.
The sitemap is like a road map for visiting search engine spiders; guiding them to all the relevant pages in your site. A sitemap ensures that the pages you really want indexed are clearly sign posted to the search engine spider.
If you don’t do this you risk hiding some or all of your content from spiders and hence from prospective clients. Refer The_top_five_website_issues_in_Adelaide.pdf for more real life details.
This information is an extract from our ebook Tune your Website for Sales Success. You can download a copy from the Succinct Ideas website and elarn more about this really important topic.
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