Site maps - how important?

[Steve]

I think many of us have heard about site maps for websites but how important are they? Can someone shed some light on this topic?

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an XML sitemap tells search engines where to go and how often....so yes every site needs one. An example of one can be found here http://www.thelawnblog.com/sitemap.xml Another form of sitemap is to create a page tree for your visitors and is not equally important.

[Steve]

Richard,

For the average lawn care business owner, how do you suggest they go about putting one together for their lawn care business site?

it is as simple as going to this website

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

well ok....I may be ignorant sometimes to peoples understanding of how this stuff works. And what I may call simple, others may be pulling out their hair about it. If anyone needs help or would like to know more they can always contact me about it.

I create mine through a plugin for wordpress. You just need to set some parameters and off ya go.

[Steve]

Ultimately it seems the sitemap is not about being a directory of all your webpages but more of some coding to tell search engines when to visit your site and how often?

Generally...so many things affect so many things.

it is specially important to me running my blog as it updates all the time. I can release an article and have it in the search engines within the hour (fastest time was 10 mins....however I may been at the end of the submission cycle). If your content never changes I wouldn't call the robots so often...it wouldn't matter cause they wouldn't come if your site does not update its content.

You also need to let google and yahoo know where your sitemap is located.

[Steve]

This brings up an interesting point. In another post we were talking about pingomatic or whatever that was that sends a signal I am guessing to search engines that you have an update on your site. What is the difference between something like that and a sitemap?

well there is a difference. Sitemaps are installed on your server and you are telling bots when to come to your site and check for new content. If you don't hold up your end of the bargain and don't have newer content when you told them to come, you can slide...believe me Google wants your new content as much as you want to be ranked #1. But they wont work for nothing...you need to pay them with content.

Pings are a service that you manually (or through cron jobs) tell certain websites that you now have new content so send someone (bots) over to add it. There are thousand of ping service companies out there that say they are the best...IMO...just stick to the big boys (search engines) and trustworthy directories and you'll do fine in that department.

[Steve]

Pings are a service that you manually (or through cron jobs) tell certain websites that you now have new content so send someone (bots) over to add it. There are thousand of ping service companies out there that say they are the best...IMO...just stick to the big boys (search engines) and trustworthy directories and you'll do fine in that department.

Do you think this is something that a lawn care business owner should be concerned with?

well I am not saying that they shouldn't be concerned with it. However it may not be as important to them as it would someone who updates their site on an hourly basis.

I would still use some form of pings when you update your websites content...any site for that matter.