What do you know about Sitemaps?
What Google says
For starters, here’s what GOOGLE says,
The Sitemap Protocol allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your websites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap that uses the Sitemap Protocol is an XML file that lists URLs for a site. The protocol was written to be highly scalable so it can accommodate sites of any size. It also enables webmasters to include additional information about each URL (when it was last updated; how often it changes; how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.
Sitemaps are particularly beneficial when users can’t reach all areas of a website through a browseable interface. (Generally, this is when users are unable to reach certain pages or regions of a site by following links). For example, any site where certain pages are only accessible via a search form would benefit from creating a Sitemap and submitting it to search engines.
excerpt from https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/protocol.html
What i say
A sitemap in XML is very important to your site, XML in element is a form of formatted text similar to html. Yahoo MSN Google and www.sitemaps.org have joint heads to agree upon a standard protocol for XML sitemaps. If you are competing in Organic search, this is a big MUST-HAVE. The XML sitemap you will generate will save the SE’s hardware costs and make search more current.
Remember, if you are dead serious about staying afloat your competitors in organic search, you need an XML sitemap.
Here, now you have absolutely no reason not to get organised with an XML sitemap. I personally use http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ to generate my free xml sitemap and it runs flawlessly. Follow the rediculously easy instructions and you cannot go wrong.
- Enter your full website URL and some optional parameters in the form below.
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Press ‘Start’ button and wait until the site is completely crawled (the progress will be indicated)
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You will see the generated sitemap details page, including number of pages, broken links list, XML file content and link to a compressed sitemap. Download the sitemap file using this link and put it into the “public_html/” folder of your site.
- Go to your Google Webmaster account and add your sitemap URL.
In the case that your site has much larger number of pages, in the region of 200,000 up, go for their paid service http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standalone-google-sitemap-generator.html
This will implement a php script that will run on your server. It cost what 3 macdonalds extra value meals would.
Though i haven’t tried GSITECRAWLER, i read good review about this XML generator software being sustainable for large websites, you may wanna give it a go at http://gsitecrawler.com/en/download/
Now, for the whole lotta you using wordpress…
Arne Brachhold of Germany has developed a plugin for wordpress that similarly generates XML sitemaps. The beauty of his plugin is that EVERY single time you edit a post or upload a new post, a new XML sitemap is generated and submitted to Google, so that Google is of course notified of the changes. Yes, and here you go http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/
Use what ive provided you, you’ll be happier.
