SEO and sitemap

[DavidLIR]

Gordon,

What do you have to say about having sitemap submitted and a copy on the website?...I have been reading a bit on the google webmaster page as well as I tried using a free service through my hosting company a2hosting...called attracta.  this seems to work just fine with my other websites, but for the one using abantecart...it is forwarded to mysite..com/store and i found some errors in the site:mywebsite.com search.
It seems it is finding some old stuff in the root directory which is not a part of the current website...You have seen my site before Love is Real.

Thanks,
David

[gordontaylor]

David,

Site maps are great and there is no reason not to use one. Back in the day they were essential, now the bots are pretty good at following every URL. I have not used Attracta before, but plan to soon. I'll run some tests without it first, then with it to see if it changes anything.

I routinely test and re-test for SEO changing keywords and phrases. Sometimes it helps sometimes it doesn't, especially with Google.

I also use Bing webmaster tools...you'll get ranked there easily and in no time...as well as Yahoo. This will also help your rankings at Google, as the all index one another.

As far as that old stuff, it's most likely cached results within Google and it will disappear in time. Forwarding is not an issue.

I have seen your website many times...very nice job. We (our company) use A2 ... just a great hosting experience, fastest servers I've seen.

I'd like to ask just one question, why use the redirect? Why not just move your store from the store folder to the root folder?

I'm just sayin'.

Gordon

[DavidLIR]

Gordon,

Thank you, for the great response.  I appreciate so much all the detailed information you are offering with this SEO area...So glad you have joined the abantecart team.  As far as the location being under /store...I had done that to keep clear which files are a part of abantecart and which ones are not...but now that I am more familiar with how abantecart works...perhaps that would be a good move to make...to move the files to the root area. 

As far as using the sitemap and attracta.
..an interesting note.  I was also using the free tools for another website we have and shortly after I had done that a man in Wisconsin found that site and ordered.  He had not been referred from anywhere else...just found the site and liked what he saw...
Thanks,
David

[gordontaylor]

Thanks for the comments David...team work is what makes this a great forum!

[jackluter]

Site map is the one of most important tactic in seo, in that many of the people don’t know use of site map and the importance. so I will tell simple answer for your understanding purpose. search engines they don’t know about our site and how many page in the site and content etc. for that you are telling to search engine through site map you are going give the information for search engines than search engines can easily recognize   

[marshasarv]

A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a website.

There are three primary kinds of sitemap:

Sitemaps used during the planning of a Web site by its designers.
Human-visible listings, typically hierarchical, of the pages on a site.
Structured listings intended for web crawlers such as search engines.

[itstrisha]

Sitemaps really helps the end user to access your complete website in one shot!