Google employee explains how they use sitemaps and how we can benefit from them
I thought this was pretty standard so here are some other tips for anyone starting a new site or looking to increase their SEO. Sitemaps and metatags are the main things you need on every site+page. I suggest you then write a 600-1000 word article using your keyword as the title and in the URL. Then use the same keyword 1-2% of the time in the body, so a 1000 word article has 10 mentions. Plus use the keyword in an H1, H2, and H3 tag. Also use the keyword in one link to another page on your site. You also want to include at least one off page link with anchor text of your keyword to a high-authority site like wikipedia. And then after that is done, I suggest you ping it using something like www.pingomatic.com to make it get crawled more quickly. Any other q's feel free to msg or email me.