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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 icon 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 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>
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. 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.
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:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/
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.
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
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.
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