Site Map

What is a Site Map (sitemap) and Why?

There are generally two types of Site Map when it comes to websites. The first is essentially a navigation aid (in html) for visitors, a page that provides a handy list or graph of internal links all in one place, so as to get a convenient overview of the website concerned. For this site, the Home Page provides this basic function, but more complex sites may need a much more comprehensive and dedicated page to provide a proper, detailed overview.

      The second is a more technical entity (in xml) that is essentially an aid for the mapping and indexing of a site by search engine bots and crawlers. This type of site map is not normally visible to its more human visitors.

      The xml sitemap should be a comprehensive list of all the web-pages within a domain that the Webmaster wants potentially listed within a search engine's search results. Each web-page has its own entry in the list that details its url or location (loc), the date (formatted as YYYY-MM-DD) it was last modified (lastmod) and its ranking (priority) within the domain.

      The loc entry directs the bot to the page concerned, the lastmod entry lets the bot know how current the page's content is, and the priority entry lets the bot know in which order the pages should be listed within potential search results - useful if you have a number of pages that all may come up in a single search for a particular term.

      Webmasters: There follows an example of what your sitemap.xml file should basically look like. You can create your file by hand in any text editor but I recommend you go here www.xml-sitemaps.com to compile it automatically. Once you've compiled it place the file in your domain's root directory. If you have sub-domains, a separate sitemap.xml file should be made for each sub-domain and its pages. Every time you update one of your web-pages you should update its lastmod entry in your sitemap.xml file.

--
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset>

<url>
  <loc>http://yourdomain.com/index</loc>
  <lastmod>2014-01-27</lastmod>
  <priority>1.00</priority>
</url>

<url>
  <loc>http://yourdomain.com/subject1page1</loc>
  <lastmod>2013-10-13</lastmod>
  <priority>0.80</priority>
</url>

<url>
  <loc>http://yourdomain.com/subject1page2</loc>
  <lastmod>2013-10-13</lastmod>
  <priority>0.60</priority>
</url>

<url>
  <loc>http://yourdomain.com/subject2page1</loc>
  <lastmod>2013-10-13</lastmod>
  <priority>0.80</priority>
</url>

<url>
  <loc>http://yourdomain.com/subject2page2</loc>
  <lastmod>2013-10-13</lastmod>
  <priority>0.60</priority>
</url>

</urlset>
--

      Once your sitemap.xml file(s) is(are) completed (or updated with additional pages) and uploaded - you can wait for it to be found by the search engine crawlers or you can make sure they find it quickly by submitting it yourself to some search engines.

      Submit it to Google by going to your Google Webmaster account, submit it to Bing by going to your Bing Webmaster account and submit it to Yandex by going to your Yandex Webmaster account. If you haven't already registered with these Webmaster accounts I recommend that you do so - they can provide you with some very useful analytical information regarding your website and its search engine functionality.

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