While our SEO experts and marketers speak about the importance of keywords, metadata and so many other SEO strategies out there, there are a number of other strategies that are just as important, if not more important! One of these important notions that many may forget about, or not even know, is a sitemap! 

Yes, our Denver website developers speak about design, development, maintenance and even the difference of SSL certificates, but when a client is looking to rank for SEO with a brand new site, a sitemap is always critical to understand! 

Once a client is in the final stages of launching their new website, a website migration will happen that 404s any old pages and make sure everything transfers over properly. Not only does this deal with transferring any old information, but it also is the perfect time to optimize for SEO which is an important part of the sitemap’s overall structure. 

If a company understands what pages are their top services, performers and what ones they want in the future to be the top pages, SEO optimization can happen on the back end. A new URL structure can help to ensure our Denver website developers, SEOs and marketers are all working on the same common goal! 

Now there are instances where a sitemap really is not needed, but to be honest, it never really hurts to have it implemented and ready to go. It not only helps with other strategies, but it can help in the beginning stages of the website design and development strategies to provide the best experience and understanding the ultimate goal of the site itself. 

Because to be honest, not every client leaves wanting SEO or digital marketing, but their sitemap was used to ultimately design and develop the best website for their needs! 

What is a sitemap? 

A sitemap is a file that developers or your agency provide to Google or other search engines to provide information on the website to let it know, “hey, this is a new site or major changes were made, so check it out!” 

Search engines are all about providing the best search results based on the search queries that are typed into search engines, and because of this, this can help to start the process of organic SEO strategies. The thing is, without a sitemap, there is no guarantee that Google will find your website. Google Bots are pretty good about finding content that is optimized properly and even find brand new websites, but submitting a sitemap is just one more way to ensure this! 

Where do you even begin? 

It is important to sit down and understand the overall functionality of your website. Its important for your potential and current customers and employees. 

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Even if you don’t have a redesign project in the process, this is perfect to clean up the site! What pages could be merged? What pages are kind of useless? Is there a valuable page that is missing? How could we have missed that? 

To be honest, it happens all the time with clients. It isn’t until our Denver website developers sit down with clients to understand the flow and needs of the site that these types of questions start to get answered! Once the sitemap is layed out, it has been finalized and is 100 percent ready to go, this is when development, content and optimization will all start at different stages of the project. 

This can easily be written down on a piece of paper, a “vision board” or even on a whiteboard to get the initial brainstorming and process started. Effective sitemaps will map out every customer journey on your website from all of the different pages they might need or will navigate through to get to your overall marketing goals!