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Creating a Google sitemap the easy way

Use a map!

I’ve said in an earlier blog that my 10 key websites are nearing technical completion and I’m beginning to think seriously now about how I get them ‘out there’ and discovered.

What’s very clear to me from everything I’ve read, in my favoutite magazine of the moment net and the book I’ve just finished reading Starting and Running an Online Business for Dummies (For Dummies) among many other sources, is that you must have a sitemap available for each of your websites.

Finding your way

So how do you create one and what do you do with it once you’ve got one?

I’ve recently discovered another free website which does the job for you - simply, quickly, easily and without loads of techno-babble … and it’s called sitemapspal.com

The procedure seems to be:

1) Sort out a sitemap

2) Upload it to the highest level that you have access to on your website … alongside your index page basically.

3) Submit it to Google … and anybody else who’ll accept it.

(Site)map reading

I’m new to sitemaps, and would welcome any additional input or guidance, but basically submitting a sitemap allows search engines to crawl your site properly and make sure relevant content is accessible via the search engines.

Here’s an extract from my sitemap for castle-visits.co.uk:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84“>
<url>
<loc>http://castle-visits.co.uk/</loc>
<lastmod>2008-05-02</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.0</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://castle-visits.co.uk/index.htm</loc>
<lastmod>2008-05-02</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.0</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://castle-visits.co.uk/castle_pages/my_castle_gallery.htm</loc>
<lastmod>2008-05-02</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.</priority>
</url>

Another essential part of this process is making sure that you have a Google webmasters account which allows you to submit your sitemap and loads of other essential things like monitoring site traffic, using Google add-ons etc.

If you have a redirect on your front page, as I do for all my sites that use php, Google sitemaps throws a wobbly.

So, for instance, the homepage for webcumbria.co.uk would normally be:

http://webcumbria.co.uk.index.htm

However, I actually use the following URL for my homepage, and have put a rediect in place to achieve this:

http://webcumbria.co.uk/content_section/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

Google sitemaps prefers that I enter the latter URL, rather the page that has a redirect on it.

If you’re getting into sitemaps for the first time, do give sitemapspal.com a spin and let me know what you think of it.

And if you find something better, please contact me or ad a comment to this page