SiteMap Mage is the newest addition to the WPMage Suite. It creates a very basic sitemap that is primarily to make indexing your site easy for Google.  However, how about if we also made this appear as a  “feature” of our website for our visitors?  Here’s a neat trick that I have done on a few sites and I can see from my WP Stats that visitors are indeed using this page to find more of what they are looking for.

First of all, SiteMap Mage uses our keyword list to make a listing of posts.  So, if you want to use this little trick, you’ll want to browse your keyword list ahead of time to cull out any keywords that truly don’t “fit” and you may want to add in a few of your own if you are familiar with the niche.

An example I am going to show is one based on quilting fabric brands.  I am a quilter so I do have an idea of what some of the more popular brands are.  For my keyword list, I used Word Wizard since I am wanting more along the lines of product names.  “Moda” is a popular quilter’s fabric, so I entered moda into Word Wizard and ended up with quite a few actual fabric lines, like Moda Spring Fling. Here are a couple of examples:

SiteMap Mage

SiteMap Mage

Here’s how to achieve this:

SiteMap Mage makes the sitemap on a “Page” in wordpress (you must have checked this option when making the site or you will need to go and activate the plugin).  Go to the Pages area of your WP Admin area and find the page titled SiteMap.  Click the Edit underneath the page title.  Change the Title of the page to something relevant.  In these two examples, I changed it to “Fabric Lines” or “View by Theme”.  Click Update on the right side of the screen.  Whereever you have your Pages listed on your theme (usually across the top for most of the themes included in CPMage), you will see that the site now has “Fabric Lines” (or whatever you chose) instead of the word SiteMap.  When you actually go to that page and view your “sitemap”, you’ll see that the new title also shows up on that page.

Now, you could leave it at that and you already have a great “feature” on your site.  However, you can also make these more visible in a couple of ways.

The first example above was accomplished by creating a graphic, uploading it to the WP Media area, making it hyperlink to the “sitemap” and then adding it to a sidebar widget.

The second example was achieved by simply creating a text widget in the sidebar.  In the text widget, there is an area for a Title.  There I put “Browse by:” and then I created a hyperlink to that page titled Fabric Lines.

By having either of these in the sidebar, they are seen on every page of your site, no matter where they enter from.

Using these examples or adding your own creative touches enables you to have that easily read sitemap available for Google, but it also gives you a chance to help your site visitors find what they need.

For a printable version of this post, click SiteMapMage.