Back in the day a simple website could get away with an on-page sitemap. Just a simple list of pages somewhere on the site. Not so much anymore. Sitemaps – at least the ones we intend for search engines to look at – are all internal. We use a programming scheme called XML to create a sitemap and put that in a place on your server where search engines will look for it.
XML sitemaps do more than just tell search engines what pages are on your website. You can add information about when the site structure was last updated, show information on what type of content is on your website such as videos and images, and even provide information to search engines about your mobile website. Search engines are more likely to index your site the way you want to with a properly coded sitemap. They’re easy to make for us but might look like a foreign language to someone without any programming experience. Livewire sitemaps are included in any website we create upon request and come with any of our SEO packages.
For those of you who are still intent on doing it themselves, here is a good article on creating your sitemap.
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2048706/Sitemaps-SEO-An-Introductory-Guide