How to create and use XML Sitemap for Google Webmaster Tool
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How to create and use XML Sitemap for Google Webmaster Tool
Introduction: this article was created for users who would like to construct ‘xml sitemap’ for Google’s search engine. Nevertheless, this article will also help you register your WordPress – blogs (private server) with Google. It’s also easy if you configure everything manually, so, their ‘bots’ will not be so stress! This will also reduce their time to index your pages on their search database.
What is ‘XML Sitemap?’
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A sitemap is a way to organize a website, identifying individual URL and data under each section. According to Google’s administrator definition, the sitemaps were mainly geared for users’ of the website. However, their ‘XML format’ was designed only for the search engines, allowing them to find everything faster and efficiently. XML can also be use to help robots identify and record the last changes about your Webpages.
1.] Download notepad++ from the original author or from a mirror and install the software.
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http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus/
http://filehippo.com/download_notepad/
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2.] Copy this template and follow the instruction which is provided.
—Copy Source Code—
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset
xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9
http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd">
<url>
<loc>http://example-one.co.uk/</loc>
<priority>1.00</priority>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://example-two.co.uk/</loc>
<priority>0.80</priority>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://example-three.co.uk/blog/</loc>
<priority>0.64</priority>
<changefreq>always</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://example-four.co.uk/subdirectory/page01.htm</loc>
<priority>0.80</priority>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://example-five.co.uk/subdirectory/page02.htm</loc>
<priority>0.80</priority>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://example-six.co.uk/</loc>
<priority>0.80</priority>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://example-seven.co.uk/Copyrights.htm</loc>
<priority>0.80</priority>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
</url>
</urlset>
—End Source Code—
Copyright 2001-2009 Lair360
Basic rules and modifications
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a.] Change the “loc” tags (default urls) and replace it with your own.
example: http://example-four.co.uk/ >> http://yourdomain.co.uk/
b.] Change your desire page’s priority. However, this settings will not influence the position of your URLs in their database. But, in shrter terms, it will only notify the bots to the importance of your pages.
The maximum number is between 0.0 – 1.0. By default (priority), the number is 0.5.
c.] Change the frequency of your webpages. This provides general information to ‘search engines’ and may not correlate exactly to how often they crawl the page.
always
hourly
daily
weekly
monthly
yearly
Notes: Google search engines hates / dislike to index blogs which are set to “always and hourly”. But, it will only accept “daily, weekly, monthly and yearly”. So, if you want to index your blog, I would recommend you to use “daily and weekly”. However, don’t re-submit your site-map more than three times! If you do this, Google might mark you as a spammer, and, block you from using their tools. Even worse, your site may be blacklist!
Sitemap re-submitting: 2-3 times /Month.
Advice: if you want to include more links, then use this template. However, please don’t add more than 60 links. This will make bots frustrated! It might also reduce your webpages probability from being index.
—Copy Source Code—
<url> <loc>http://template.co.uk/subdirectory/page02.htm</loc> <priority>0.80</priority> <changefreq>daily</changefreq> </url>
—End Source Code—
Copyright 2001-2009 Lair360
3.] Now, all you need to do is go into google tools and submit your sitemap.xml file! After that, you’ll need to wait…
4.] Done!
Advice: It is strongly recommended that you place your Sitemap at the root directory of your web server. For example, if your web server is at example.com, then your Sitemap index file would be at http://example.com/sitemap.xml. But, it’s your choice…
