OK apologies if this is a really newbie question but I have a site, it doesnt have many pages at the minute (4 i think). The site will continue to grow to 50+ pages over the next few months. I just have a few questions: 1) Is there any advantage to submitting a sitemap for such a small site? 2) What is the difference between a sitemap and a google sitemap? Thanks
Better to submit the pages to google now even if the number of the pages are less right at the moment (for faster indexing of the pages by the google) Sitemap and google sitemap are one and the same. Just to show that the sitemap is tailor made for google, it is called google sitemap
The Google xml site map http://www.google.com/webmasters/start/ isn't hard to make and/or maintain. Having both a normal html listing of your pages, and a google sitemap just helps you, so I've never understood the "choice" about this. Do both. Having it for a small site? A small site needs all the advantages it can get. I post 3 page sites for some clients, I always put in the sitemap listing and file. Uclue.com (the place all the Google Answers Researchers went ), just opened up a Private Question feature, so now you can ask questions and get answers without telling everyone in the world as well. Start Looking for them on YouTube soon as well.
Just been to the google webmaster tools and signed up. I now know how a Sitemap will help me and how to submit it but how do I create one?
The basic format is an XML file. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84"> <url> <loc>http://www.glennhefley.com/</loc> <lastmod>2006-11-20T09:01:22+00:00</lastmod> <changefreq>daily</changefreq> <priority>0.8</priority> </url> <url> <loc>http://www.glennhefley.com/blogging/index.php</loc> <lastmod>2006-11-20T09:01:22+00:00</lastmod> <changefreq>daily</changefreq> <priority>0.8</priority> </url> <url> <loc>http://www.glennhefley.com/index.php</loc> <lastmod>2006-11-20T09:01:22+00:00</lastmod> <changefreq>daily</changefreq> <priority>1</priority> </url> <url> <loc>http://www.glennhefley.com/blog/</loc> <lastmod>2006-11-20T09:01:22+00:00</lastmod> <changefreq>daily</changefreq> <priority>1</priority> </url> </urlset> Code (markup): The tags (inside <> ) are loc : location lastmod: last modified date changefreq : how often does this page change priority : how do you rate the priority of importance to this page (scale from .01 - 1) Copying the record set (between <url> and </url> and putting your information inside the tags will work fine. You don't need all of the information. loc and priority are the only two that are required. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/about.html It is a simple text file.. simple as in "just text" so use notepad or your HTML editor to create it. There are several Sitemap creators out there, so you might find one that words well for you if all this code stuff is a bore. Once you have the sitemap name the file sitemap.xml and put it in the root directory of your web site i.e. http://www.yourdomainname.com/sitemap.xml Then go into web master tools at Google and list it. Google will tell you to make a file with some weird code i.e. googlef21b65f6cac47620.html Make a file with your HTML editor, and name it as requested. It is a blank file and just lets Google know that you have access to the web site you are claiming. In a day or two, check back at the Web Master Tool area and see if there are any errors reported. Let me know if you have any problems with that. It is fairly simple for me, but then I've been doing this over 15 years, and I forget sometimes that code is complicated when you aren't use to reading it every day.
I recommend you read this sitemaps article. It explains and have examples of HTML, XML, text etc. sitemaps.