The importance of sitemaps

Make it easy for your visitors. Provide them with all kinds of navigational help. If visitors are able to find information on your site quickly, they will surely come back. Sitemaps are a extended form of navigational aid wherein you display the web site structure with links to major sections and sub-sections.

Sitemaps need not be just a series of links in a tabular form. You can also provide details for each section and sub-section through descriptive text.

I've come across various kinds of sitemaps. Some developers display a sitemap in the form of a large image-map while some offer a plain HTML version, but the worse kind are those that do not have links. As you would guess, it's no use making a sitemap without links. So remember, to provide correct links and keep the sitemap well updated.