A sitemap is quite simply – a 'map' of your website! It is one page which shows and links to all of the other pages on your site.

There are two main uses for sitemaps. The first is to help your site's visitors find certain pages or areas they need to get to. This is especially useful if you have numerous pages that are not on your main site navigation.

The second function of a sitemap is that they are used by search engines to find all of the content on your site. So, having a sitemap can actually enhance the visibility of your pages for search engines - which should ultimately have a positive effect on how high your site features in search engine listings.

InstantPro comes with a search engine friendly sitemap built-in, but to create a 'human-friendly' sitemap to help your visitors navigate your website, this tutorial will help you. For more information on the built-in sitemap within InstantPro, see our XML Sitemap Guide.

There are two methods you can use to create your sitemap using the InstantPro Builder.

Before you start creating your page though, make a list of the pages you have on your site - as it will be much easier to create your sitemap with a list of pages to refer to.

You should be able to view this information from the main navigation on your site. You might also want to make a note of the web address that appears in the address bar of your browser (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox) and how it changes each time you view a different page.

As an example, if your site has three pages – a home page, gallery, and a contact page, the web address of each page might change like this:

www.example.com for the home page.
www.example.com/gallery for the gallery.
www.example.com/contact for the contact page.

Remember, the idea of a sitemap is to have one page on your site where you, and search engines can get to all the pages on your site, so make sure to include all your pages!

The first and easiest method you can use when creating your sitemap is to create a new page, and when you are asked what type of page you wish to create, select the 'Links' page.

Then all you need to do is add all the pages on your site as links. This is where knowing the web address of your pages really helps. Once you have all your pages linked you have a sitemap.

Don't forget to call this page 'sitemap' though, or people and search engines wont know where to look to find your sitemap!

If you don't have much experience with the InstantPro software you may find that our tutorial on creating a Links page helps you through creating your sitemap this way.

If you create your sitemap using the Links page, it will look like this:

Click image to view full-size

The second method you can use (which is a little more advanced but not too difficult), involves using hyperlinks. The first thing to do is create a new blank page and list your pages on it.

Using the picture below as an example, you can see the pages have just been listed, without any other information about them. Once your pages are listed then you need to turn all your page names into hyperlinks which can be clicked to get to the different pages on your site.

Click image to view full-size

If you are unsure as to how to create a hyperlink, or even unsure as to what they are, then please visit our hyperlink tutorial.

Once you have read our create a hyperlink tutorial, you will be able to create a sitemap like the one shown above.

One thing to remember though, is that if your site has over a hundred pages it is advisable to split your sitemap into more than one page. This fits with the theme of keeping the information clear and easy to read. Search engines will also read the information on numerous sitemaps quicker than they would one long one listing over 100 pages.

Follow the links to create your sitemap using a Links page or with standard hyperlinks today!

Now you know how to create a sitemap for your InstantPro site, it might be worth submitting your sitemap to Google.

As mentioned earlier InstantPro automatically creates a search engine friendly XML sitemap, please see the XML sitemap guide for more help with submitting this to Google.

It is also possible to verify your site with Google's webmaster tools. Please see the Verify with Google Webmaster Tools for further help with this.

Google say they will try their best to crawl your pages more frequently if you do this, which may also improve how highly your site displays in search results.