Create a Google Sitemap
by Robin Eldred, Apis Design
One of the hot new website promotion tips du jour is the Google
Sitemap. This is a small XML file that sits on a website and
provides information for Googlebot when it comes to visit. Is
this file useful? What does it do? How do I create one? How
do I get Google to find it? Well, let me tell you.
Firstly, the general consensus on whether or not a Google
Sitemap is useful is that, well, the jury is still out. The
official stance from Google is that this entire program is in
Beta so there are no promises or guarantees. Perhaps by
understanding what this file is for we can infer its
usefulness.
A Google Sitemap is, essentially, an XML file that contains
information on all the web pages in your site. You create this
file, submit it to Google, and Google will read it. What
Google does from there nobody really knows. You can specify
certain parameters in the file such as the location (URL) of
your web pages, when they were last modified, how often the
pages are updated, and what each page's "priority" is.
Perhaps Google is relegating these Sitemap submitted results to
a secondary index where they compare the results to their
live index. This might let them know how people use (and
abuse) the program. It is my opinion that the vast majority
of participants in this program are website designers and
marketers who are trying to give their clients a
teenie-weenie leg up on the competition within Google. That's
not to say that there isn't any value, though.
It is possible that by telling Google where all of your web
pages are you can improve your web page saturation in their
index. This may indirectly improve your rankings by getting
an unlinked or deeply linked page into the index that wasn't
previously there. But as I mentioned earlier, it's difficult
to know if Google is even using Sitemap information in their
live index.
So now that you've decided that you want to create and submit a
Sitemap of your own, here's how:
[1] Firstly, you need to create your XML file. Don't bother
doing it yourself. There is an excellent free online utility at
http://www.sitemapbuilder.net/.
[2] You must now submit the Sitemap to Google. Visit
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login and login with
your Google account. Don't have one? Don't worry - that's free,
too. Once you've logged in you can add as many Sitemaps as you
like.
[3] Don't forget - whenever you update your website (by adding,
removing or relocating web pages) be sure to repeat this
process. You won't need to resubmit your sitemap to Google,
though.
Google is also touting their Mobile Sitemap program. This
one, I believe, may be of greater significance. I believe
that Google is building an index of mobile-phone friendly
websites (Mobile Web Search Beta) and they are using these
new Mobile Sitemaps as a way to get the public to help them
seed the initial directory. The mobile web is in its infancy
right now, so it wouldn't surprise me if creating a Mobile
Sitemap gave mobile sites a significant leg up. But again; no
guarantees here - just opinion.
Happy Sitemapping everyone!