Does Google Sitemaps improve search results?

[sherpa99]

I've been a web developer for 7 years and I used to be way up on writing my html to be friendly to spiders and bots -- but I've fallen off the wagon a bit as my code/functionality has taken me else where.

Now, much later down the road -- I'm reading stuff about Google site maps, and the like. At the same time my Client -- a shoe manufacturer -- wants better Google results.

If I start using Google Site Maps -- will it improve my site's search ranking results?

I've always thought that if I can satify Google then the rest of the engines should follow -- I'm I on the right track? Do google sitemaps get me there?

Thanks!

[petra]

A Google Sitmap will help Google spider all pages of your client's site but a sitemap alone won't do it. You will need to address all optimization issues first such as, metatag usage (keyword and description) inbound and outbound (keyword-anchored) links, internal link fluidity of your client's site as well as attention to keyword optimization through the url, directory, titles, headings content and the proper use of h tags

[edited by: petra at 10:28 pm (utc) on Jan. 10, 2006]

[stapel]

It might not hurt to mention to your client that you don't own Google, so you can't guarantee anything. And with billions of pages online and only ten landing on the first page of "hits", the odds of any one page placing "high" could be viewed as being very small.

Eliz.

[Leosghost]

Tell "client" that "the only way to be sure of being on page one , at the top position in google is if they spend more money on the adwords campaign per keyword than do the competition" ..all other factors are not entirely within your control ..and thus you cannot be held responsible ..but you are willing to "manage their adwords campaign" for a "percentage of their spend" ..

Again point out that if the competition spends more you are not responsible for your client not being on the nice blue background at top of serps on an hourly basis ..

However if they spend the most daily ..google will assure this position themselves ..you might point out to them that google is now firstly an advertising agency and a search engine is now secondary ( if that ) to it's operation ..