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Creating Sitemaps

Welcome to my creating sitemaps page. Here, I discuss what a sitemap is, how to create one automatically and how to submit them to Google and Yahoo.

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap (or site map) is a document which represents the architecture of a website. It can be a document in any form, but typically it is in XML, HTML and text. There are two main types of sitemaps.

Sitemaps can be put on your website as a map to help visitors navigate your website. It typically lists all the folders and all the pages in their respective folders. For an example, click here to see GeniusProphecy's sitemap.

The "search engine sitemap" concept was introduced by Google back in 2005 and Yahoo quickly followed suite. Sitemaps can be submitted to search engines like Google or Yahoo, which lists to them all the pages on your website. When submitting these sitemaps to Google, it even tells you which pages it was not able to find, search-query statistics and your site's PageRank. PageRank is a score out of ten assigned by Google to each indexed web page.

Note that creating and submitting a sitemap is not necessary in order to get into the Google and Yahoo search engines. This is because they have their own "submit your website" pages. However, do not fully take my word for this, but I wouldn't be surprised if Google notices more of your pages if you submit your sitemap regularly.

How do I create a sitemap?

In creating my sitemap (for the search engines and for visitor's navigation), I used a website called XML Sitemaps. Their process was extraordinarily simple. You simply enter your website, select how often you change your website and click "start". After they crawl your site, they allow you to download your sitemap in all the typical formats (XML, HTML, and text, as well as several others). And then, you're done! Click here to go to XML Sitemaps.

How do I submit my sitemaps to Google and Yahoo?

To submit to Google, you must go to Google Webmaster Tools. Register an account if you don't already have one (most people would already have an account). Log in, and click on Sitemaps on the side panel. You can then add your sitemap. Google accepts "sitemap.xml". Google will spend some time going around checking sitemaps. Don't forget to verify your website with Google. This involves the simple process of placing a file in your root directory. Visit again some time later and Google will present you information on URLs not found, when they last crawled your home page, what search terms links to your site and much, much more.

You will need to go to Yahoo Site Explorer in order to submit your sitemap to Yahoo. Put your URL into the submission box. Again, create an account (if you haven't already done so) and log in. You can then submit your sitemap (or "feed", as they call it). Yahoo accepts the "urllist.txt" sitemap format. Don't forget to authenticate your website with Yahoo.

Finally, you are finished with this business. You should, however, resubmit your sitemap again approximately every month. This allows the search engines to see if pages were removed, moved or created.