Put simply it's a page or pages that contain a list of and link to all the other documents on your site. This is useful on two levels:
1. Your visitor can quickly reference all the documents on your site to find exactly what they're looking for.
2. Search engine spiders can also quickly find and index every single page of your site in the least amount of time. The SEO benefits of using a sitemap far considerable and should not be ignored.
The most important part of the content component (of a search engine algorithm) is keyword selection and where you place keywords on your web pages. In order for your target audience to find your site on the search engines, your web
pages must contain keyword phrases that match the phrases your target audience is typing into search queries. Finding these keywords that your target audience uses to find your product is accomplished by conducting keyword research.
The biggest mistake I see businesses making with publicity, is they're not consistent at all, only sticking with it for 1, 2, or 3 months. It pays to be consistent is because sometimes you'll send out a press release and get no response back, no publicity, nothing... In fact, this is when most people quit, when they should realize that publicity is a ?numbers game? that generates exposure over the long-run if they would just stick with it.
But here's the better way!
There are many websites with strong search engine positions and high Pagerank, where you can buy text links for a certain fee. Depending on the strength of a website and the value of its links, it may cost from $10 to $3000 (and more) for a ROS (run-of-site) text link. Everything will depend on your budget and goals. If your goal is PR6 - it may cost for example $200 per month to reach it. Yes, it's not cheap, but it's only the first step?
At some point in time, other webmasters will begin to contact you requesting to exchange links. Ta-daahhh! You've made it! The first thing you need to do is visit their site. Is their site relevant to yours? Are you comfortable putting a link to their site on yours? Would you want your Grandma to visit your site and follow that link? If the answer is yes, then put up the link. E-mail them back to thank them for the offer and to let them know where on your site you put their link. If you are not comfortable putting the link on your site, don't worry about it. You will get requests from people who obviously didn't read that you prefer not to link to casinos and Viagra sites or whatever, and you will get requests to exchange links with sites that have absolutely nothing to do with your site's subject matter. Just ignore them, or you could reply and politely decline. Now here comes some more Golden Rule stuff.
