You need SEO for your website, and you’ve done all your homework: keyword research, keyword optimization, onsite SEO (META tags, alt tags, keyword rich content, etc), offsite SEO (linking strategies: articles, press releases, blogs, forums, directories), advertising and so on. There is one more thing you need to complete your efforts: SEO with Google Sitemaps.

First of all you should know what a Google Sitemap is not: a guarantee of getting high ranks in the Google search engine positioning results or higher PageRanks. A Sitemap is not a tool that forces Google robots to crawl on demand, but a tool that makes the crawler more effective by providing a clear structure of your website.

Now let’s take a look at the benefits of Google Sitemaps:

Google Sitemaps is a tool that helps Google index web pages faster. You don’t (and should never) submit your site to Google, but your Sitemap. This Sitemap tells Google about the most important web pages of your website and how often you change them. Basically you help Google crawl your pages smarter.

You can see how Google indexes your website, whether there are crawl errors or not, which of your pages are indexed by Google, how many pages refer to your website and how many link to your website, etc. You will notice that Google shows fewer links than, let’s say Yahoo! That’s because Google has other algorithms and other relevancy queries.

Google Sitemaps and the Google Searcher

You can submit up to 200 sitemaps, so there are some limitations. However, this free Google service has already proved its efficiency and you should really consider using it, at least for the Google Sitemap statistics. Even if you don’t submit a Sitemap you’ll still be able to see what queries and keywords people use when they find your website. You’ll get results from the top searches, top searches from mobile devices and top searchers from the mobile web.

You’ll know whether people find you for the keywords you have been targeting or for other keywords. This will help you optimize your content. If most of your visitors find your website for only one or two fractions of your content – let’s say home-made wine – that’s an important niche and you should probably consider expanding its content to keep visitors interest.

Conclusion: Google Sitemaps is also a tool that enables you to see what’s going on in the mind of a Google searcher.