Sitemaps are xml documents used by the search engines to index your website. it is not very crucial for your website but it will help the search engines do their job better. by pointing out the right way to index you will be like spoon feeding the contents to the search engines.
What you need
Creating sitemaps
There are many websites offering online tools to generate sitemaps, Google lists some of the sites offering sitemap generation. you can actually make your own sitemap, follow the instructions in making your own sitemap from google sitemap guidelines.
Creating a Google webmaster tool account
You can create google webmaster account at
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
Upload your sitemaps to your server using any ftp clients. You can upload them using the ftp third party tools from wikipedia.
Verify your sitemap
you can use meta tag edit or you can upload the Google code to your server then click on verify button. You can choose verify thru meta tag or via upload html file.
Via meta tag
Upload an html file with the file name similar to
google6f48fdc41162585b.html
Submit your sitemap to yahoo
To submit your sitemap to yahoo open a new browser window at
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Your sitemap will be in the form
http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml
Submit your sitemap to msn
You can submit sitemaps to MSN by visiting MSN webmaster tools page at
http://webmaster.live.com/webmaster
Download the verification file and upload it to your website.
its in the filename: LiveSearchSiteAuth.xml
with the contentst similar to this:
What you need
- sitemap.xml
- ftp access
- basic html knowledge
- lots of coffee
Creating sitemaps
There are many websites offering online tools to generate sitemaps, Google lists some of the sites offering sitemap generation. you can actually make your own sitemap, follow the instructions in making your own sitemap from google sitemap guidelines.
Creating a Google webmaster tool account
You can create google webmaster account at
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
Upload your sitemaps to your server using any ftp clients. You can upload them using the ftp third party tools from wikipedia.
Verify your sitemap
you can use meta tag edit or you can upload the Google code to your server then click on verify button. You can choose verify thru meta tag or via upload html file.
Via meta tag
Upload an html file with the file name similar to
google6f48fdc41162585b.html
Submit your sitemap to yahoo
To submit your sitemap to yahoo open a new browser window at
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Your sitemap will be in the form
http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml
Submit your sitemap to msn
You can submit sitemaps to MSN by visiting MSN webmaster tools page at
http://webmaster.live.com/webmaster
Download the verification file and upload it to your website.
its in the filename: LiveSearchSiteAuth.xml
with the contentst similar to this:
3FF5B0C37E4EF996E38A78AB4AC8F1D6
; "Mostly Harmless")
; "Dragonball Evolution Movie")
; "Life the Universe and Everything")
; "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe")
; "the-ultimate-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy.jpg")
; "Angels And Demons")
; "StarCraft: Brood War")
; "Eagle Eye")
; "Linksys Compact Wireless G USB")
; "We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things")
Great article, thanks for the information. In my view sitemaps are critical to getting your site listed in Google/Yahoo etc. correctly.