OK, so now, after running the SOFTPlus GSiteCrawler and seeing all the crap that all the search engines have run into on my site, I am now sure that I am an idiot or a bad businessman (or both). A clean sitemap is a key to introducing Google or any other search engine to your site.
I ran it on my finance site Canadian Financial Opinions and found SO many screw ups that I am amazed that anyone finds my site, I think it is going to take all weekend to clean up that mess.
Sitemap ?
I ran it on my family web site and cleaned up a couple of issues there as well, and will run it tonight on this site just to make sure I have not screwed up too much here either. It’s a tool I would highly recommend, even if you don’t plan on saving a Sitemap (which I am not planning on doing, I just want to see what a Robot runs into going through my sites).
Sitemap Creation
I create the sitemap for Canadian Personal Finance using the Yoast tool. On this site, I use RankMath’s sitemap tool. Both work fine, but it is critical to create a sitemap that works, somehow.
Is a Sitemap Important for a Web Site?
Yes, unless the entire site is a single point on the map. If there are multiple sub components, it is essential to have a Sitemap. There are many utilities to proactively build them, and they should be used, if you want to be noticed.