Google site maps - does your site need one?

If you are involved in the selling of your company website then you may well have received a call at some point from businesses offering to create and submit a Google site map on your behalf.

The company stresses the importance of a Google site map and the positive benefit to your site's positioning in Google. But just how necessity is it for your website to have a Google site map? The reply is "it depends".

A Google site map is a extremely useful tool as it allows a website owner to 'tell' Google which pages it should index, and in which order of precedence. However, if your site is already well positioned in Google then there may be little if any benefit to submitting a Google Site Map, and it is unlikely to have any impact on your existing rankings.

The real value of a Google Site Map is if your site uses composite technology, has poor internal navigation or delivers dynamic content and you are having problems in acquiring your content successfully spidered. On bigger and more composite sites using a Site Map could help encourage a profoundly crawl and ensure that perpetually changing URL's are indexed. It's also a useful exercise when you launch a new website as it puts it firm on Google's radar.

If your site would benefit from a Google Site Map it's comparatively simple and quick to put in place. If you have a small and uncomplicated site then you can do it yourself using one of the many third party site map generator tools that are now available(http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html). For larger and more composite sites this is something that your IT or development department should already have put in place. More info on Google Site Maps can be found here https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/about.html