Customers are always calling us and asking how they can rank better in the search engines. This is really a question about “search engine optimization”.

While there are a lot of different pieces to the search engine optimization puzzle, one of the first things you should do is submit your sitemap to the major search engines. This is like telling them “Hey guys, here is where you can find all the pages to my website””.

Basically, a sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for each page on your website, along with some additional data that can include things like the last time the page was updated, how often it typically changes, the relative importance to other URLs on your site, etc.

Don’t worry if words like XML sound intimidating, since there are a lot of programs (both free and commercial) that you can use to create the sitemap with just the click of a button. You may want to visit http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ as a free option, or if you have more advanced needs, you can download A1 Sitemap Generator.

Once you have created your sitemap and uploaded it to your server, it’s time to tell the search engines to look for your sitemap. This part of the process is particularly helpful because not only do you tell the search engines all about your website, but many of the search engines will give you detailed information about your website, such as errors and other potential problems.

To feed your sitemap to the search engines, use these URLS:

Google Webmaster Tools: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
MSN Live Search Webmaster Tools:  http://webmaster.live.com/
Yahoo! Site Explorer: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Ask: http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.the_URL_of_your_sitemap_here.xml

You can also make your sitemap easier to find by updating your robots.txt file (if you don’t have one of those on your site, you should!) with a line like this:
Sitemap: <sitemap_location>

For more on the sitemaps protocol you can visit http://www.sitemaps.org/

Submitting a sitemap to the search engines won’t get you amazing search engine optimization results right away, but it will take you another step in the right direction.