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Three Ways to Index your Site with Google Sitemaps:
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
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:
If you realy appreciate my article you can link to us. To read
more visit http://thefreesite.co.nr - Free Tips on Adsense,Link
Popularity,Search Engine Submission and Optimization,Affiliates
and Other freebies. Please mail me at maxhammer1901@gmail.com if
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free follow ups and you can win a free e-book.
Written by: Akash Kumar
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