Sitemaps
What are sitemaps?
Sitemaps are used to inform search engines regarding URL’s on a website that are available for crawling
Webmasters use these sitemaps. They use an XML file that lists the URL of a site that includes information about the URL’s. This includes when each page was updated, other changes within the site and the relationship between the URL’s in the site.
Using sitemaps allows the engine crawlers to crawl sites more efficiently.
Why use sitemaps?
They are particularly beneficial to those sites that use Macromedias Flash or JavaScript menus that do not include HTML links.
Many search engines will only follow a certain number of links per page. If a site is very large, a sitemap can allow visitors to access all of the content on the website through the search engines.
How this works
An XML sitemap has a list of the pages on your website along with the information regarding each page.
This is an example:
http://www.yourwebsite.com/Services.htm
2008-04-28
weekly
0.9
Explanation of each entry:
1. LastMod. You must tell the search engine the day and the time you change the page. This tells them which ones need to be indexed immediately.
2. ChangeFreq. Tells the search engine how often they should check the page.
3. Priority. The relevance of each page is given in a format of 0.0 to 1.0, so that the search engine is aware. This compares the pages from one to another.
First things first
You must have a sitemap generator which you can find in many places.
The following is from http://freesitemapgenerator.com
I have included the main information from their homepage.
© 2008 freesitemapgenerator.com
Free Sitemap Generator
Our tool creates a sitemap as defined by Google™ for your site. Enter the url of your website(s), let our tools generate a sitemap for you and download the compressed sitemap later. Don't forget to submit the sitemap to Google™. We spider your entire site (up to 5,000 pages) to make sure all links/pages are included in the sitemap.
Sitemaps generated: 96,329
(we spidered 184,176,500+ pages)
How does it work?
First you must create an account and add your first website. Just enter the homepage url of your website. Whenever you want to generate a sitemap press the make sitemap button on the control panel page.
Our spiders will, just like a Search Engine spider, crawl your website finding all links. When it is done spidering your website you will receive an e-mail.
You can then download the sitemap (zip file) from this site and upload it to your own website. Don't forget to submit your sitemap to Google. You can even let us upload the new sitemap directly to your website automatically! And we can even ping Google™ to let them know you have a new sitemap ready.
At this time we cannot spider more than 5,000 URLs per site.
The following one is for Google and Yahoo. It is from http://gsitecrawler.com
You can currently download the GSiteCrawler for free. Play with it, let us know what we can do to make it work better for you!
Requirements
• Windows versions 95,98, ME, 2000, XP, 2003 Server
• Internet Explorer v. 5.5 & up
Sitemap Generator Google (and Yahoo!) for Windows
Google Sitemaps allows the webmaster to help Google index their pages optimally. The GSiteCrawler will help you generate the best Google Sitemap file for your website. The GSiteCrawler uses different ways to find all the pages in your website and can generate all sorts of files, statistics and more. The sitemaps file format has lately been also adapted by Yahoo! - even MSN/Live.com is pledging it's support.
Making sitemap files has never been so easy!
The GSiteCrawler is available for free and runs under Windows - all you need is an internet connection and the desire to make the most out of your website!
Do you only need a quick sitemap file? Just follow the steps in the integrated wizard and you'll have the sitemap file on your server in no time!
Are you looking for more than just a sitemap?
The program also offers tons of options, settings, tweaks, and more - if you want to do more than generate just a simple sitemap file. How about a urllist-file for Yahoo? an RSS feed? a ROR file? a HTML sitemap page? It's all possible with the GSiteCrawler!
Take a look around the site. We use Google-Groups to discuss the program and possible extensions. If you run across something that you feel is missing, feel free to post in the Google Groups or just send me a short note directly.
Big thanks go to webado for helping out in the forum!
© SOFTplus Entwicklungen GmbH • Sitemap • Privacy policy • Terms & conditions • Contact me • About
What do you do next?
1. Put the sitemap file in your root directory of your Web server alongside of your main index file.
2. Notify the search engines using webmaster tools. Go into the search engines for submit sitemaps to find where to enter the URL of your sitemap.
3. Place a reference to your sitemap in your robots.txt file, as”Sitemap http://yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml”.
For the major search engine in submitting sitemaps:
Search engine Submission URL
Google
http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=
Yahoo!
http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=SitemapWriter&url=
http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=
Ask.com
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=
Moreover.com http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=
Live Search
http://webmaster.live.com/ping.aspx?siteMap=
Conclusion
You must remember to follow up with your sitemap. Regularly check on the performance and update when needed. Check your page ranking that you have set as they may change from time to time in priority.
Author:
Sandi Baker
http://letusgetitdone.info
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