Difference between revisions of "Learn/Creating-an-XML-Sitemap"

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If you're familiar with '''robots.txt''' you can specify your sitemap there. This will help all major search engines know where it is and doing this can replace the steps of submitting it to individual search engines.  Our entry in robots.txt looks like this:
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If you're familiar with '''robots.txt''' you can specify your sitemap there. This will help all major search engines know where it is and doing this can replace the steps of submitting it to individual search engines.  Your entry in robots.txt will be one line in the following format:
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: Sitemap: http://www.aboutus.org/sitemap_index.xml.gz
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: <code>Sitemap: http:&#47;&#47;URL-OF-YOUR-SITEMAP</code>
  
 
==Tips==
 
==Tips==

Revision as of 18:00, 27 July 2010

KristinaMongoose.png
An XML sitemap can help you get more traffic          RetweetIconSmall.png FacebookShareIcon2.png    GoogleBuzzIcon.png
By Kristina Weis
email or post a comment for me

Note: This article is a work in progress. It should be complete on Wednesday, July 28th.


A sitemap (or site map) is a tool to help search engines crawl and index pages on a website more effectively. That can mean search engines will index more of the pages on your site, more quickly than without a sitemap. That in turn make it easier for people to find your website.

The amount of time the search engine spends crawling your important pages compared to the time it spends fetching pages you don't care about is called "crawl efficiency." Google and other search engines will spend only a limited amount of time crawling your site. You don't want them wasting time crawling pages that you don't care about. A complete XML sitemap can direct search engines to spend their time crawling only your most important pages, increasing the likelihood that these pages will be indexed and then discovered by the people you want to attract.

Google recommends having both an HTML sitemap and an XML sitemap following the Sitemap Protocol. Our article on creating an HTML sitemap tells you how to do it. In this article, we'll discuss the options for creating an XML sitemap, which is more complex.

Types of XML Sitemaps

  • Sitemap Protocol XML sitemap options:
    • Standard XML sitemap - This is a XML file that lists URLs along with metadata -- such as how important a page is -- so that crawlers can more effectively crawl your site.
    • Simple text file with one URL per line
    • RSS feed (typically for blogs)

A standard XML sitemap offers more options because of the metadata component, but a text file or RSS feed can be easier to create. If it isn't important for you to suggest your most important pages for search engines to check more frequently, it's probably just as well to create a sitemap in one of the simpler ways.

Creating your Sitemap

Google has instructions for creating sitemaps.

If this isn't something you can do yourself, there are many tools and sitemap generators that can help. (Note: Generators may not find pages that the search engines aren't finding so they may not help you much there . Looking into your database for a list of all your website's pages is ideal.) Also, if you don't have one already, an HTML sitemap is simpler to create and still does the trick.

Make it work: Let the search engines know about your Sitemap

Submitting your sitemap to Google via Google Webmaster Tools is probably the most important thing to do. You will need to login with your Google Account (like you do for Google Analytics, if you use that) and "add a site" to get started.

To the right is a helpful video from ReadyMadeWeb.com about submitting your sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools. Also, here is Google's instructions for submitting a sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools.

You can also submit a sitemap to Bing using their webmasters tools offering.

If you're familiar with robots.txt you can specify your sitemap there. This will help all major search engines know where it is and doing this can replace the steps of submitting it to individual search engines. Your entry in robots.txt will be one line in the following format:

Sitemap: http://URL-OF-YOUR-SITEMAP

Tips

  • According to the protocol, if you have fewer than 50,000 pages you can list them all in a single file. If you have more than 50,000 pages, you'll need to break your XML sitemap up into multiple files and list the files in a sitemap index file.
  • You can also create multiple sitemaps to give you a form of analytics. For example, you could group similar types of content on your site into their own sitemaps and then look at how many of the pages in each are indexed in a month. This could tell you that search engines really like your x type of content because they've indexed it all, and that your y content may be just okay because only half of those types of pages are in the index.
  • If you're using an XML sitemap, utilize the metadata option to point search engines to pages that matter and change the most.

Points of Order

  • Sitemaps are purely supplementary. Web pages not in a sitemap can still be found and indexed other ways, such as through links.
  • XML and text file sitemaps cannot have more than 50,000 URLs per file.
  • You can have multiple sitemaps, and including the same URL in more than one is okay.
  • Creating and submitting a sitemap does not guarantee that search engines will index all of the website's pages listed in it. It can help them find the content, but they will only index it if they like what they see.

Additional Resources

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