Sitemaps are a method of letting Search Engines know what pages are available to be crawled on a site.

In its simplest form, a sitemap is a file (XML) that lists URLs for a site along with additional meta data about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site. More information on sitemaps is available at www.sitemaps.org.

The Search Engine Sitemap allows sites created and managed through the WMS, to utilise an automatically generated sitemap including every published page. The module prioritises pages based on their position in the site with those in the root (including the Homepage) given a priority of 1.0; those pages in the next directory level are given a priority of 0.8; the next level a priority of 0.6 and so on. This priority has no effect on any search engine rankings - it tells the Search Engines where the pages are in relation to the other pages in the site.

The module can also be set to change frequency property in a sitemap dynamically. This is done based upon the difference between the last modified date of the file and the date and time of the request for the sitemap. This can be switched to a default value or off completely. The sitemap will also follow any rules set out in the robots.txt and not include disallowed pages.

Please contact the Ezone team if you would like to discuss the inclusion of an SEO Sitemap Module within your site or for more information.