One of the most important first steps in designing a website is developing a sitemap. A sitemap is a page within your website that lists and categorizes all the pages and content of your website. The page can be used as an outline for your web design as well as a way to organize your website layout and content throughout your site.
A sitemap is built for organization and structural reasons. It gives users and search engines a quick outline for what your website contains and where all the content is located. Users may view this page to get a glimpse of how your site is organized and they can also find exactly what they’re looking for.
Search engines rely on sitemaps to find your content. When a search is conducted, every page on your website gets sorted through. Search engines can’t send your website traffic if they cannot share the content hiding within. With search engine optimization techniques added throughout your web design, your pages will eventually start ranking high in web searches.
If your business is planning on building a website, be sure to only take bids seriously from companies who document page count. A sitemap is a necessary blue print for your web design. How can you build a house without knowing the number of rooms your require? Same goes for a website design. Once you build a sitemap, keyword research can be conducted and you can begin to design your wireframes.