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Creating your sitemap - Some hosting providers (for example 1and1) provide utilities via their web control panel to create your sitemap, so you should always check with your provider first. If this service is not available, then visit
www.xml-sitemaps.com and enter your site URL into the generator box. After the program has generated your sitemap, click the relevant link to save the XML file output (XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language and is more advanced than HTML) so that you can store the file on your computer. You might also pick up the HTML version for use on your actual site. Open the resulting file with a text editor such as Notepad and take a look through it.At the very beginning of his web redevelopment, Brad creates just two pages, the Chambers Print homepage and a Contact us page. He uses a sitemap-generator tool to automatically create a sitemap, then edits the file manually to tweak the priority tags (see below) and add a single office location in a KML file (see also below):
<?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://www.g-excesscom/</loc>
<priority>0.9</priority>
<lastmod>2007-07-12T20:05:17+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.g-excess.com/content/view/735/53/</loc>
<priority>0.8</priority>
<lastmod>2007-07-12T20:05:17+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.g-excess.com/content/view/702/53/</loc>
</url>
</urlset>
I cover KML in greater detail later (under local optimization, page 217) so all you need to understand for now is that a KML file tells Google where something is located (longitude and latitude) – in this case, Chambers’ Boise branch. Sitemaps.org defines the standard protocol. There are four compulsory elements. The sitemap must:
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Begin with an opening <urlset> tag and end with a closing </urlset> tag.
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Specify the namespace within the <urlset> tag. The namespace is the protocol or set of rules you are using and its URL is preceded by “xmlns” to indicate it is an XML namespace.
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Include a <url> entry for each URL, as a parent XML tag (the top level or trunk in your site’s “family tree”).
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Include a <loc> child entry for each <url> parent tag (at least one branch for each trunk).
All other tags are optional and support for them varies among search engines. At https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/ protocol.html, Google explains how it interprets sitemaps. You will note that Brad used the following optional tags:
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The <priority> tag gives Google a hint as to the importance of a URL relative to other URLs in your sitemap. Valid values range from 0.0 to 1.0. The default priority (i.e., if no tag is present) is inferred to be 0.5.
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The <lastmod> tag defines the date on which the file was last modified and is in W3C Datetime format, for example YYYYMM- DDThh:mm:ss for year, month, day, and time in hours, minutes and seconds. This format allows you to omit the time portion, if desired, and just use YYYY-MM-DD.
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The <changefreq> tag defines how frequently the page is likely to change. Again, this tag merely provides a hint to spiders and Googlebot may chose to ignore it altogether. Valid values are always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never. The value “always” should be used to describe documents that change each time they are accessed. The value “never” should be used to describe archived URLs.
My advice with respect to the use of optional tags is as follows:
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Do use the <priority> tag. Set a value of 0.9 for the homepage, 0.8 for section pages, 0.7 for category pages, and 0.6 for important content pages (e.g., landing pages and money pages). For less important content pages, use a setting of 0.3. For archived content pages, use 0.2. Try to achieve an overall average across all pages of near to 0.5.
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Only use the <lastmod> tag for pages that from part of a blog or a news/press-release section. Even then, do not bother adding the time stamp. So <lastmod>2008-07-12</lastmod> is fine.
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Adding a <changefreq> tag is unlikely to help you, as Google will probably ignore it anyway (particularly if your pages demonstrably are not updated as frequently as your sitemap claims). If you do make manual changes to an XML file that has been automatically generated for you, you may wish to visit a sitemap XML validator to check its correct formation prior to moving on to referencing and submission.
On the forum (www.seoexpert- services.co.uk) I maintain an up-to-date list. My current favourite is the XML Sitemaps validator, at www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xmlsitemap. html.
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