Site Maps - Importance

advice for a newbie re SMs

[Jazznjediluva]

I just began a job doing search engine optimization and I have absolutely no experience.
How important is a site map? I see our competitors stuff theirs w/ keywords and I wonder how much of a difference it makes to placement. Any advice for a newbie would be appreciated. thx

[gargallo]

The Sitemap is VERY VERY important to show the spider the way to your site pages. Sitemap help's to, to increase or optimize your pagerank (has you optimize your link structure with it) and finally and answering to your question, yes, you can put similiar keyword density as in your competitors sites, but NEVER copy, you will never get a good position if you use the SAME TEXT as google has a tool to check this.

Hope I have helped your a bit.
Daniel.

P.D. Sorry for my english, im spanish!:-p
jeje