Getting a new website indexed in search engines can be accomplished very easisly. However, getting every single page on a site indexed (and quickly) can be a little more challenging. One of the best ways to ensure your website gets fully indexed is to add new content and create internal links to all your pages. But if you’re running a website with thousands of pages, most of which have static content, it make take search engines longer to find all those pages, especially if your link structure is whacky.

The solution? A sitemap.

One of my favorite tools is Site Map Builder. This website lets you input a URL and it will create an xml sitemap for you right there. No need to download any programs. Its fast and simple. For those of you who have very large websites, Site Map Builder also has a program you can download (for free) that will build you a sitemap. The program has a lot more features, including:

• Extract links from a site recursively
• Extract links from a single page
• Edit and delete link properties
• Generate TXT or Google Sitemap
• Save map as TXT or XML
• Generate a map from a text file
• Option panel for page time out and simultaneous connections
• Link Validator

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a sitemap. A sitemap helps guide those little search engine spiders to all the pages on your website in a fast and accurate manner. Without one, the spiders can get lost. If you haven’t signed up for Google Webmaster Tools, you really need to. They make it very easy to submit your sitemap url to them. I’m not 100% sure that submitting your sitemap directly to them will help get you indexed faster, but really…it can’t hurt. They also give you statistics and diagnostic reports for every site you submit. It’s a great tool to help show your rankings.

In conclusion, if you don’t have a sitemap on every site you own… get to it. Having a sitemap can only help you.