Adding a Site Map

West · #1 (**permalink**) 06-07-2007, 07:15 AM

Can somebody please explain the steps to adding a site map?

I've been trying to add one to my boyfriend's site through google, and I just can't figure it out. Is it kind of difficult, or am I just slow?

Thanks

webdev · #2 (**permalink**) 06-07-2007, 08:04 AM

Its really easy.

1. Get a google account if you already don't have one.
2. Login to your webmaster tool using your google login info
https://www.google.com/webmasters/to.../en/about.html
3. On the main page when you login into your google webmaster tool, you will see a "Add Site" box. Put the address of the site you are trying to add to google and say Ok.
4. Next go to http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and put in the url of the site you're want the sitemap for (note this is the same site you added t o google webmaster tool in the above steps)
5. Once you create the sitemap, they will give you a xml sitemap file to download. Download that file and upload that to your web host server. (make you upload the sitemap xml file to the root folder of you site, i.e www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml)
6. Now go back to your google webmaster account and click on "add a site map"
7. Choose "Add a General Sitemap" from the drop down. It will bring a box asking for the link to your site map. Just put in the URL www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml and you're DONE

Once you're done adding your site and sitemap to your google webmaster tool account, google will take about 2 weeks to crawl your site. Once they have crawled your site you will able to see different statistics about your site. Google will also tell you if there are any broken link on your site, etc.

Hope this helps. If you having difficulty, just look around or try the google help files.

HaroldP · #3 (**permalink**) 06-07-2007, 09:02 PM

Great instructions Webdev.

I need to print this out when I'm ready because I've never really understood how to do this and I know it's very important to do when you have a site.

webmaster · #4 (**permalink**) 06-08-2007, 07:43 AM

Nice post Weddev! I also think Xml sitemaps are very good, and simple way to create a sitemap!

For my old site I did it manually. Google also allows it to create a blank txt file and put each url in a new line. But, it is very time consuming.

Even for dynamic pages you have to create a sitemap manually, each time you add som new content.

Thats why I like Joomla and Wordpress. There are some plugins that create a sitemap automagically when you create a new item and let google know.

webdev · #5 (**permalink**) 06-10-2007, 12:07 PM

Thanks guys. Let me know if you guys get stuck somewhere.

Here's another tip. If you like to find out how many or what pages of your website google as crawled so far, you can do the following to check.

1. go to google.com
2 in th search box type in <b>site:www.yoursite.com</b> and hit enter.

This will tell you if google has crawled your site and how many and what pages are currently listed in their search database so far.

For my site php-learn-it, it gives 17 pages. So i know my website is listed in google and i can see how many of my website pages are search ready.

TechieGuy · #6 (**permalink**) 07-10-2007, 01:02 PM

I'd thought I just at that those who have blogs on Blogger you can use the atom feed as a sitemap. The beauty of this is that it will automatically update when you create a new post. It may work for other blog services that offer feeds.

max · #7 (**permalink**) 07-10-2007, 04:30 PM

Yep, techiguy that's what I use and it's wonderful!

I bet a lot of people don't know that.

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