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Google Sitemaps is an easy way for
you to help improve your coverage in the Google index. It's a
collaborative crawling system that enables you to communicate
directly with Google to keep us informed of all your web pages, and
when you make changes to these pages.
With Google Sitemaps you get:
- Better crawl coverage to help
people find more of your web pages
- Fresher search results
- A smarter crawl because you
can provide specific information about all your web pages, such
as when a page was last modified or how frequently a page
changes
But how do you submit a site
map to Google
Your site map will need to be in
xml format - if that's foreign to you, here's a free download that
will make you a site map
http://www.vigos.com/products/gsitemap/
Once you have your site map in xml
format, upload it to your website then submit it to Google at
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login
I had a site that was properly
optimized, but Google was only showing the home page for months and
not indexing the rest of the pages. I submitted the sitemap and
within days most of the other pages were indexed - so it's worth
doing.
The following article is from
SiteProNews
| Google
Sitemaps Explained - How To Use Google Sitemaps |
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2006 |
Three Ways To Index Your Site With Google
Sitemaps [Difficult,Hard, And Easy]
Google has recently implemented a program where
any webmaster can create a Sitemap of their Site and
submit it for indexing by Google. It is a quick and
easy way for you to keep your site constantly
indexed and updated in Google.
The program is appropriately called Google
Sitemaps.
In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must
have an XML generated file on your site that will
transmit or send any updates, changes, and data to
Google. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is
everywhere these days, you have probably seen the
orange XML logo on many web sites and its often
associated with Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS
feeds to syndicate their content.
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Today RSS is known mostly as 'Really
Simple Syndication' but its original
acronym stood for 'Rich Site Summary'.
XML is only simple code like HTML and it
is used to syndicate your content to all
interested parties.
And the interested party in this case
is Google. By creating Sitemaps Google
is really asking webmasters to take
charge of the indexing and updating of
their sites. Basically, doing the
Googlebot's job!
This is a 'Good' thing! With the
steady influx of new web sites growing
rapidly, indexing all this material will
become a challenge, even with the
resources of Google. With Sitemaps,
webmasters can now take charge and make
sure their site is crawled and indexed.
Please note, indexing your site with
Sitemaps WON'T improve your rankings in
Google. You will still be competing with
the other sites in Google for top
positions. But with Sitemaps you can
make sure all your pages are crawled and
indexed quickly by Google.
There are some other big advantages
of using Google's Sitemaps - mainly you
have control over a few key variables,
attributes or tags. To explain this as
simply as possible, your XML powered
sitemap file will have this simple code
for each page of your site: |
<url>
<loc>http://www.yoursite.com/</loc>
<priority>1.0</priority>
<lastmod>2005-07-03T16:18:09+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
</url> |
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Along with 'urlset' tags at the
beginning and end of your code, and an
XML version indication - that's
basically your XML file! File size will
depend on the number of webpages you
have.
Taking a closer look at this XML
file:
location - http://www.yoursite.com
- name of your webpage
priority - you set the
priority you want Google to place on
that page in your site. You can
prioritize your pages: 0.0 being the
least, 1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in
the middle. This is ONLY relative to
your site. It will not affect your
rankings. Why is this important? You
have certain pages on your site that are
more important than others, (home page,
high profít page, opt-ín page, etc.) by
placing high priority on these pages,
you will increase their importance in
Google.
last modified - when you last
modified that page, this timestamp
allows crawlers to avoid recrawling
pages that haven't changed.
change frequency - you can
tell Google how often you change that
particular page. Nevër, weekly, daily,
hourly, and so on - if you frequently
update your page this could be extremely
important.
Why do I need a XML Generator? |
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In order for this XML sitemap file on
your site to be constantly updated, you
need a Generator that will spider your
site, list all the urls and
automatically feed them to Google. Thus
constantly updating your site in
Google's massive index or database. Keep
in mind, Google also gives you the
option of submitting a simple text file
with all your URLs. |
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Now there is already a flood of these
generators popping up! Different ways of
generating your XML powered sitemap
file. More are probably appearing as you
read this. For your convenience, three
ways to generate your XML Sitemaps file
are listed below:
Difficult - Google's Python Generator
That's a relative term, if you know
your server like the back of your hand
and installing scripts doesn't scare the
bejesus out of you, you're probably
smiling at the word difficult. Google
supplies a
link to a generator which you can
download and set up on your server. It
will cough up your sitemap XML file and
automatically feed it to Google.
In order for this Generator to work,
Python version 2.2 must be installed on
your web server - many servers don't
have this. If you know what you're
doing, this will probably be a good
choice. |
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You don't need a Google Account to use
Sitemaps but it's encouraged because you
can track your sitemap's progress and
view diagnostic information. If you
already have another Google Account -
gmail, Google Alerts, etc. just use that
one to sign in and follow directions
from there.
To submit your Sitemap using an HTTP
request, issue your request to the
following URL:
www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url
Hard - A PHP Code Generator
This is a php generator that you can
place on your server. This generator
will spider your site, and produce your
XML sitemap file.
Download the phpSitemapNG and upload
it your server. Run the generator to get
your XML sitemap file and send it to
Google.
Again, this is only hard to do if you
don't know your way around PHP files or
scripts.
Easy - Frëe Online Generator
These Generators are popping up
everywhere, and Google now keeps a list
of these 'third party suppliers' of
generators on their site. Find them
here:
http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html.
One of the easiest to use is
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com, and you
can index up to 500 pages with this
online Generator very quickly and it
will give you the sitemap XML file
Google needs to index your site. It will
go into your site, spider it and index
all your pages into an XML sitemap of
your site. You can download this file,
Compressed or Non- compressed and make
minor changes such as setting the
priority, changing frequency, etc.
Then upload this file to your site as
sitemap.xml to the root directory of
your server i.e. where you have your
homepage. Then notify Google Sitemaps of
your XML file and you're in business.
Of course, the only drawback, if you
constantly add pages to your site you
will need to also add these pages to
your XML sitemap file. This won't be
much of a problem unless you're daily
adding pages to your site - then you
will need something like the PHP or
Python generator to do all this for you
automatically.
Google is still the major search
engine on the web so getting your pages
indexed and updated quickly is the major
reason to use Google Sitemaps. If you
want your site to remain competitive
it's probably the wisest route to take.
About The Author
To learn more about the different
Services and Programs offered by Google
clíck here:
http://www.bizwaremagic.com.
Google_Cash_File.htm © 2005 Titus
Hoskins of
http://www.bizwaremagic.com. This
article may be freely distributed if
this resource box stays attached.
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