What are SiteMaps?

Simply put, sitemaps help search engines index your website. Did you know that most all large cooperation's/website have them? That's a large sign that you may want to take the time to follow my directions here.

Time To Complete - 10 - 20 Mintues

1. Once your website is live, I'm assuming you have all your keywords and pages titled correctly, go to this site: Create your Google Sitemap Online - XML Sitemaps

2. Follow the "simple" step by step instructions.

3. By this step, you should have already uploaded the "sitemap.xml" to your "root" directory, usually somewhere in "/public_html/...".

I also assume you have already created a Google Webmaster account (if you don't already have one) and have added/confirmed your website.

4. One thing that the link above did not tell you is you have to create a "robots.txt" file. To do this simple task, in your Google Webmaster account click on "Tools" on the left hand column.

5. Under Tools, click on "Generate robots.txt". Here follow all the instructions it gives. Simply your telling the spiders/bots what not to index. It's pretty simple, such as, if you have a folder on your website that you do not want people viewing, it would look something like this:

Now most of this is explained pretty striaght forward, and the "*" character simply means that it applies to ALL search engine spiders (yahoo,msn,google..etc.).

6. Once you have added the directories you want to allow/block click the download link, and download it somewhere to your computer. Then upload it to the "root" directory of your website (usually in /public_hml/...).

7. Click on the "Sitemaps" link on the left hand column. Under "Sitemaps", click on the "Add a Sitemap" link. Under the drop down list, select "Add General Web Sitemap". Then simply input "sitemap.xml". I'm assuming you left the name of your downloaded sitemap from the first link in this post as "sitemap.xml". If you renamed it to something else, you need to input the name you renamed it to so Google knows where your ".xml" file is.

8. After you add the link to your sitemap.xml now simply wait until it is done pending, and Google and other search engines will now start indexing your website correctly and in an organized fashion.

It seems like a lot to do, but really it is not, I just know that some people here will need those extra details to actually understand how to get this done, but for most it should be straight forward and simple

__________________

Robert Smith
Cheif Executive Officer
admin[at]hastyhost[dot]com
Phone: (206)-666-6603
Cheap Web Hosting

Oh, that's actually pretty nifty! I've never made a sitemap before, because I always thought I would have to do it by hand, which is too much work for me. Perhaps with this, I will make one someday...