why the search engines are only showing my homepage'?

digital321 · #1 (**permalink**) 04-16-2008, 10:12 AM

hey everyone,
ok, so my site is finally in the search engines, but i've noticed that when i type in the topics pertaining to a particular page on my website, it doesn't show. basically, the only page that pulls up on the search engines is my homepage (www.tashera.net/index.html or just www.tashera.net) it's an immigration site in arabic. i do remember when i submitted my site to google for instance, it asked me if i wanted to submit a url or a sitemap. i chose url, since i didn't know what a sitemap is.

which takes me to my second question... what's a sitemap and is it easy to create? and can i resubmit my website to google for instance, even though i've already submitted my url?

thanks guys

Ulrich · #2 (**permalink**) 04-16-2008, 12:34 PM

Sitemaps are XML files that you upload to Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask etc. search engines (only the top ones allow this). It's very easy to create a sitemap.

It has headers etc. exactly like an HTML file:

Code:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<urlset 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"
         xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

and adding URL's to be crawled by the search engine spiders are also simple, here's an extract of mine (not all of it).

Code:

<url>
      <loc>http://housebaked.zzl.org</loc>
      <lastmod>2008-04-10</lastmod>
      <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
      <priority>0.8</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
   	<loc>http://housebaked.zzl.org/about.php</loc>
   	<lastmod>2008-03-05</lastmod>
	</url>
	<url>
   	<loc>http://housebaked.zzl.org/faq.php</loc>
   	<lastmod>2008-04-01</lastmod>
	</url>

	<url>
   	<loc>http://housebaked.zzl.org/contact.php</loc>
   	<lastmod>2008-03-05</lastmod>
	</url>
	<url>
		<loc>http://housebaked.zzl.org/copy.php</loc>
		<lastmod>2008-03-06</lastmod>
	</url>

The lastmod and priority options are optional. At the end you just close it with </urlset> Check out http://www.sitemaps.org for more information.

lisa · #3 (**permalink**) 04-16-2008, 04:46 PM

That's perfectly normal to only see your homepage when your site is very new. Definitely work on building a sitemap and just keep on creating new content, you'll eventually see your other pages show up.

Lajocar · #4 (**permalink**) 04-16-2008, 11:23 PM

The SE spiders will crawl all your linked pages eventually

Keep on adding more content

digital321 · #5 (**permalink**) 04-16-2008, 11:54 PM

you guys are awesome! thanks for all the help!

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