Future Searches

SEO Steps: Creating XML Sitemaps

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Future Searches

It is crucial to have a Sitemap(s) based on the Sitemap protocol to tell search engines all pages of your site and to be indexed quickly.

What is a Sitemap?

Sitemaps consists of a list of your website’s URL’s. According to Google, a sitemap should’nt have more than 50.000 URL’s in it. If you have more than 50.000 URL’s, (some SEO’s believe it’s best to keep number of URL’s in a Sitemap up to 500) then you should have multiple Sitemaps and have a Sitemap index file.

How to create a XML Sitemap?

You can either create your Sitemap manually which can take time and effort all the time or use an automated Sitemap Generator. I use XML-sitemaps.com as a Sitemap solution. It’s free and easy to create Sitemaps but there are other tools on the net, just make a search to find anything suitable to your needs.

Once you have your Sitemaps ready, you should submit them to search engines by using webmaster tools to make the best of them. Also put them in your robots.txt file to direct search engines in to your Sitemaps.

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