Let's face it, in this day and age, technology moves faster than most people can comprehend. The Internet is the same way and search engine companies are constantly changing their algorithms to adjust to this. One of the newest things to change search in recent years is called an XML sitemap. In short, an XML sitemap is a file that lists the URL's on your site with metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it changes, how important it is and its relativity to other URL's on the site). These sitemaps are there for a reason. They help the spider crawl the site more efficiently and also hint as to the other pages on your site for future crawling.

XML Sitemaps were created in 2005 due to the ever increasing size of the Internet, as well as individual web sites and pages. Google created the XML format to crawl a web site and it's internal pages more easily as it found that it's spiders were skipping over pages as the changes were being made (ie: an active forum, community site or a business with hundreds of pages). So to keep tabs on all of these pages and the changes being made to them, they created the XML sitemap.

A good Search Engine Optimization company will not only create you a comprehensive sitemap that will be indexed within all the search engines, they can also implement different metadata information, as well as no-follow links to pages that you don't want indexed. The indexing and analysis of hundreds of pages is where a good SEO firm can step in and take over the large, and often times, daunting task. As search evolves, the need to hire a good SEO company is becoming even more important. Most major companies and businesses hire a SEO company to handle all of their online needs, from sitemaps to competitive analysis. The ROI from SEO is the most profitable in the entire spectrum of advertising. So before you dive head first into the world wide web with your business, you may wish to speak to an expert in Search Engine Optimization beforehand.