Google many not know about all your website pages. So the sitemap is a way to tell them about all your website pages. It will contain all webpages you want Google to list in search engines.
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How To Create and Submit xml Sitemap for Google
1. How To Create and Submit xml Sitemap for
Google
So what is the sitemap.xml file and how to create and submit it?
Video Version:
What you need:
Sitemap tool :http://www.auditmypc.com/xml-sitemap.asp
Ftp software (or cPanel file manager): http://www.filezilla-project.org
Google Webmaster Tools :http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
Text Version:
In two steps it will be done. But first heres why you do this:
Google many not know about all your website pages. So the sitemap is a way to tell them about all
your website pages. It will contain all webpages you want Google to list in search engines.
Note: Just because you submit a sitemap to Google does not mean your website pages will get
indexed.
Submitting sitemap is really useful to websites which have a lot of pages which may not be easily
found by Google spiders. Spiders are the software that scan the web for new pages.
Step One Creating sitemap.xml File!
Go to: http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp
Click the right square banner and this opens up the tool. Note: If your browser asks you to install a
flash plugin or some other plugin do so.
Now enter your website url, uncheck Respect <a rel=no follow> attribute and check Exclude
images, then click play button.
The reason you want to exlcude image files like
http://www.linkbuilderexpert.com/Images/nbssccThinReport-2.jpg is because Google requires special
tags in sitemap around images which this tool doesnt include. I havent found a tool that creates
these special tags, but dont worry not submitting them isnt a problem.
2. Clicki image to see bigger size
Now click on Sitemap button at top of tool and wait until tool is finished. When it finishes the play
button turns green again.
Now click on Status column and take a note of anything marked in red in this column (they are 404
page not found pages). You can know which pages are linking to these problematic pages by right
clicking on one of them and select Browse Subtree.
3. These are pages that you have to remove from sitemap. Right click and select Remove selected
entries to remove them. If you have many Click the first one, press SHIFT on your keyboard and
click the last one, right click and select Remove selected entries.
Now click on Export, Sitemap XML
Now upload the sitemap.xml file to your website in the root. This means your sitemap.xml file will be
like this:
http://www.yourwebsitename.com/sitemap.xml
You can use ftp software to upload files from your computer to your website. The one I use is called
Filezilla at http://filezilla-project.org/
Last step is to submit the file to Google Webmaster Tools.
First add your website to Google Webmaster Tools and then add a sitemap.xml file. Its pretty
straight forward to add your website:
4. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
They will ask you to verify youre the owner of the site, they will tell you how to do that its very easy
to do.
Once you do that click on the website url or the thumbnail image after you login to Google
Webmaster Tools account and then from the left side select Sitemaps under Optimization.
On the right click on Add/Test sitemap red button and enter sitemap.xml in box, click Submit and
youre done.
Congratulations you now know what is a sitemap, why submit it to Google sitemap and how
to create and submit one.