Give your Web site a Google-friendly sitemap

Boost your Web site know-how with Google Webmaster Tools — free, easy-to-use marketing resources for Webmasters and Web site owners.

What is a Google-friendly sitemap?

A Google-friendly sitemap is an xml file you’ve informed Google about that is a detailed list of all the public pages of your Web site. This file resides on your Web site server, and the details within the file include the importance of individual pages, when pages were last updated, and how often pages are updated. It’s in xml format, so it’s designed for Google to read, not designed for people to read.

Why have one?

With the sitemap as a guide, you make sure Google knows about all of the pages on your site. Google may not always crawl all of your site, (follow every link around your site) everytime it visits your site. In your xml sitemap, you can tell Google if you have new pages, or if some of your pages were updated (and thus should be recrawled for the latest contents), or if some pages haven’t been updated (then there’s no need for Google to recrawl the pages).

In addition to telling Google about all your Web page details, the Webmaster Tools in your new account provide lots of other handy information. You can see things like:
* top search queries (the keywords people are searching on, and how your site ranks for these queries.)
* crawl errors (if you have a “page not found” on your site.)
* page rank distribution
* index stats (such as external pages that link to your site.)

How to get started?

First, you’ll need a Google Webmaster account. (Sign up with Google, or ask your Webmaster to set up a Google Webmaster account for your site.)

Next, you need to create the sitemap. It’s easiest to run a script that will create your xml sitemap for you, rather than try and write all the xml syntax (mumbo-jumbo) by hand. After trying out a couple of different services, we found one that’s easy to use and free to try: XML Sitemaps.

Finally, inform Google about your sitemap by verifying you are the Web site’s owner, and telling Google the location of your sitemap. Google will walk you through these steps once you’ve logged into your Webmaster account.

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