Google Sitemaps Explained - How to Get Your Site Indexed With Google Sitemaps
By Titus Hoskins |
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.
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, websmasters can now take charge and make
sure their site 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:
http://www.yoursite.com/
1.0
2005-07-03T16:18:09+00:00
daily
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 profit page,
opt-in 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. Never, weekly, daily, hourly, and so on - if you frequently
update your page this could be extremely important.
Why do I need a XML
Generator?
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.
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. But lets look at Three ways to generate your XML
file.
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.
Google XML Generator
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.
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 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.
PHP Generator
Again,
this is only hard to do if you don't know your way around PHP files or
scripts.
Easy - Free 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:
Google's List of Third Party
Generators
http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html
One of the
easiest to use is www.xm-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
Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins of www.bizwaremagic.com
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