A site map, in old days, refers to a page on your site that lists important, if not all, pages in your site, including short descriptions or summaries of the pages.

This is different from an XML sitemap, which is now introduced by both Google, Yahoo! and MSN. The latter is a XML file used to inform search engines about pages on your site that are available for crawling.

Both the purpose of traditional site maps and XML sitemaps are to help search engine spiders crawl your site better.

For web site visitors, site map provides a way for them to navigate your site and find the information they need. This is especially effective if you have a relatively small site so scrolling to find the pages is possible.

As you probably have known, search engine robots can’t read and process Javascript. No matter how cool or sophisticated your site navigation is, if it requires Javascript, search engines can’t see it. Robots, on the other hand, is extremely well in traverse through pages through hypertext links.

Adding text links for your navigation bar is helpful in this case because it provides another way for the robots to find your pages.

XML sitemaps are more complex. But, you can use software or plugins to generate proper format of the file.

Unlike the first type of site map, which just another page on your site, XML sitemaps need to be submitted to the search engines for them to be recognized.

Next, you may want to learn more about Google Sitemaps.