XML Sitemap to Attract Search Engines and Visitors
Every website must provide a Sitemap to both visitors and search engines, as both of them are important for its online survival. A good sitemap shows each destination page, its importance, its relevancy and therefore helps in increasing value of a website. An XML sitemap is not limited to Google, Yahoo and Bing only, it is accessed by many other bots and therefore it has much more importance then what we realize. A sitemap can be in HTML, XML or ROR depending on its purpose or we can create a sitemap in each format.
A sitemap as the name indicates is a representation of structure of web site in an easily accessible manner, it is a micro level view of a website. It provides a link to all sections and pages in a hierarchical fashion. A well designed sitemap is a guide map of a website where a user can find what is available on this website and where. In a well designed sitemap a user can visit or navigate to any portion or location of a website in a single click.
An additional sitemap is indispensable these days. This is the sitemap specially provided for helping search engine robots and spiders. The format of this sitemap should be XML. XML format helps search engine robots and spiders to easily access all pages of your website from a single location for indexing purpose. This file i.e., Sitemap.XML contains all information related to web pages like modification or creation date, priority of page and link to page. Google Search Engine and some other search engines too recommend using sitemap with every website. This is an important step of Search Engine Optimization for webmasters.
Generating Sitemap.XML file
You can easily create your own sitemap.XML file if you know XML or you can use a tool to automatically create one. Google also provides information on creating XML sitemap. One such option to create a sitemap is provided by Pingoat. It is very convenient and easy to use. Simply type your website address i.e. URL at the space provided for Site URL. Select change frequency i.e. period within which contents of your website are updated. Choose any of the update options from hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or never. Now type date of last modification, it will automatically display current date as date of last modification by default. Then select priority i.e. importance of your pages for indexing by Google between 0 and 1 for your website or web pages. Finally click on Create Sitemap. Within a few minutes or seconds (depending on contents and web pages of your website), it will display links to all your web pages. Now Simply, right click and choose save as to save this XML file to your computer. You can also automatically upload this file to your web server by selecting Upload to my FTP server option or create a compressed format by selecting that option.
There is another variation of sitemap called ROR which stands for resource of resource. This is an independent XML format, you can read more on ROR XML format by visiting ROR FAQ. You can generate ROR sitemap by simply typing Site URL and clicking generate sitemap. You are also required to add a code snippet to head tag of your home page or index.
Google XML Sitemap Generator Google has also launched a Free Sitemap Generator for windows and linux servers which is still in Beta. This tool will generate sitemap automatically, you learn more or download Google Sitemap Generator from Google Code site.
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