Google Sitemaps is a new tool for website owners and publishers, released by Google themselves. It allows you to submit a sitemap (a document that contains links to every page of your site) from your own homepage in .XML or in plain .TXT format that will help Google to spider your pages. This again should result in a faster indexing process of your site and could therefore even result in better search engine placements. You can learn more about the program and sign up for a free account here.
Create A Sitemap For WordPress Blogs
If your site or weblog is published with WordPress you are very lucky because it didnt take long until the first Google Sitemaps plugin for it was released. The tool, that you can find on the website of the creator, , does not only create your xml sitemap totally automatically and update it every time you add new content to your site but does then also ping Google directly to tell them that there are new pages to spider.
Create A Sitemap For Every Other Site
Dont worry now if your website does not use WordPress because this doesnt change the fact that its very easy to create the sitemap. You could for example use the free program Google Sitemap Generator that is programmed in Java (so you need the Java plugin for your browser) and can be found here. It will automatically spider your website and index up to 50000 different links. When its finished creating the sitemap you can assign each found link a priority and update frequency value and then save it either in .xml or .txt format.
Do I Need A Google Sitemap
Thats a good question. If your website is already well indexed in Google and gets spidered frequently a Google Sitemap will probably not help you much but especially for newer sites or sites that get updates very often I would recommend to make use of them. It is not a big hassle anyway.
Thomas Hfter is the webmaster and publisher of the Metally.net and the Smartphony. You can find more of his articles and tips at his personal website .
You may republish this article as long as the above message stays intact.
In a perfect world, everyone would be honest.
In a perfect world, no one would violate search engine policies to try get a better listing.
Theyd respect the terms set out by the search engines. Its not a perfect world. And especially not when it comes to the highly competitive search engine optimization industry. Prime example;
1) Here is a quote taken from a search engine optimization website;
2) Here is a quote taken from Googles Webmaster Guide;
When I was in the sandbox (and I dont mean the Google Sandbox) my mother taught me to be sure my information comesfrom the horses mouth. Thats still good advice today.
Which are lies and which are misconceptions
Who knows Did the SEO (search engine optimizer) actually read Googles Guidelines Is it old advice that hasnt been updated for years
The truth is, it doesnt really matter. What matters is that you need to know the guidelines becauseyou will be the one to pay the price for anything done on your behalf. They are publicly posted for that reason. You should read these two;
http://www.google.com/webmasters/ and
http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html
I am not an SEO - I do not offer SEO services. Im a website designer that believes designersshould understand search engines since theyre creating the pages that search engines will be indexing. I know that if a search engine optimizer promises you good ranking and violates search engine policies to get them, its your site that will be removed from Google. Not theirs. You need to know that, too.
Learn from 10 years of experience. Get free help at