How To Create a Sitemap (For People and Search Engines)
Sitemaps have been around since the advent of the Web and used primarily as a way to list all the pages on a particular website.
Nowadays, sitemaps have other purposes such as organizing web content by topic, showing the search engines which pages you have created and developing a linking structure that emphasizes specific areas of your website over others.
But just how do you make a sitemap? And, how do you get that sitemap into Google, Yahoo! and MSN? That's today's topic and for the webmasters and entrepreneurs out there, I think this article will be quite refreshing.
TWO FLAVORS OF SITEMAPS
Just as we build web pages with both people and search engines in mind, we should have a similar mind set when building our sitemaps. In short, it's a best practice to create one for people, and another for the search engines.
HTML SITEMAP
First, let's focus on your visitors who will be existing customers, prospective customers, vendors, partners and employees.
Your sitemap provides links to all the most important pages on your website and is organized in a logical manner that makes viewing the sitemap a pleasurable experience.
As a best practice, consider the following when creating your HTML sitemap:
- The file name should be sitemap.html
- Organize your pages by topic or category
- Group all your Registration items together such as links to Sign Up pages, Upgrade pages, Feature & Benefit Comparison charts, Order Forms (PDF) and Purchase pages.
- Group all your Help pages together including your FAQs, Create a Support Ticket, Report a Bug and Feature Requests forms
- Group all your Company pages together such as your About Us page, Contact Us page, Legal and Privacy statements
- Limit the number of categories to 10
- Limit the total number of links of your sitemap to 100
- Include an area for blogs, podcasts and videos
- Link to RSS and XML feeds
- Link to your XML sitemap too
XML SITEMAP
Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling.
In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can crawl the site more intelligently.
Sitemaps.org has established the protocol for how to create an XML sitemap that is compliant with Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
Here are some short cuts for creating your own XML sitemap.
Google's Sitemap Generator Program
The Google Sitemap Generator is a Python script that creates a Sitemap for your site using the Sitemap Protocol. This script can create Sitemaps from URL lists, web server directories, or from access logs.
ONLINE SITEMAP GENERATORS
These online sitemap generators create your sitemap free and and produce both plain text and xml versions of your site.
Sitemapspal
PortalApp Generator
Peterz.de (German)
Autositemap
Tarrant.it Sitemap Generator
XML-Sitemaps Generator
Hockeygods Online Sitemap Generator
Nuah Online Generator
Pingoat Sitemap Creator
Node Map Sitemap XML Creation Service
Neuroticweb.com Sitemap Generator
AudiMyPc.com Sitemap Generator
Web-design-pros.ca Sitemap.xml.gz Generator (Java Webstart Application)
Free Sitemap Generator
phpSitemapsNG
ScriptSocket Sitemap Generator
Google Sitemaps XML Validator
Google Sitemaps Information Center
AutoMapIt
Safe Area
SUBMITTING YOUR SITEMAP TO SEARCH ENGINES
Once you've created your sitemap, submit it to Google Webmaster Central, Yahoo Site Explorer and MSN's Live Search Webmaster Center.
HIGHLIGHTS
Remember to create two sitemaps; one for your visitors and the other for the search engines. Keep the HTML version simple and organize the information as succinctly as possible. For the XML version use a sitemap generator to streamline the work then submit it to Google, Yahoo! and MSN so they get updates as soon as you refresh your website with new content.
MORE TIPS?
If you have a tip of your own, add it below by leaving a comment.
