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SEO Tips: Sitemaps
Human Edited Web Directory
 Sitemap
and the Search Engines...
You see the advertisements all over the internet, “Get
your website listed on Google within 7 days, only $$$”.
The fact is you don’t have to pay anyone to get listed on
the Google, MSN (Live), and Yahoo. Most of the times the search
engines spider will find you. But you have to be ready by having
a completed website, with all links working, content based of
what the website is about and including specific keywords you
want to target. You can help the search engines crawl and understand
better your websites internal structure by including a Sitemap.
What is a Sitemap?
A Sitemap is a list of the pages on your website.
By including one on your server you are letting the search engines
know all the pages you have on your website, when the pages were
modified and how often they change. You want to include two types
of Sitemap, a Sitemap.xml and Sitemap.html.
A Sitemap.xml is the what the search engines
will look at behind the scene. You can create a site map by going
to XML-sitemaps.com
input your website address and on the following page you will
have your Sitemap.xml ready, download it…then uploaded to
your web server. You also have the option to download a Sitemap.html,
this is what the end user (human) will use to find pages on your
website. The sitemap.html will be included as one of your pages
with a link usually coming from the navigation menu of the website
labeled "sitemap".
Ok, once you have uploaded your Sitemap to your websites server.
You need to tell the search engines that the file is there. To
do this we will use Google’s Webmasters, Live Search Webmaster
Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer. If you don’t already have
one, open an account for both Google and Live Search:
Google.com
1 - Go to Google Webmasters
and click on Sign In.
Once you have added your website, go to ‘Add Sitemap’
and enter the name of the sitemap, usually “sitemap.xml”
and you are done.
Live Search
2 - Go to Live Search Webmaster Tools
and Sign In with your Windows Live ID or create one.
Same as above, once you add your website, go to ‘Add Sitemap’
and submit the complete address of your Sitemaps location, usually
( http://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml )
Yahoo Site Explorer
3 - For Yahoo to find the your sitemap.xml go to Yahoo
Site Explorer Submit
and on the second option that says ‘Submit Site Feed’
enter the entire address for your Sitemap, such as
http://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml
Also remember if you add new pages to your website to include
an updated Sitemap to your webserver. Keep an eye on both webmasters
tool to make sure you don’t get errors from the search engines.
Find BASIC SEO and SEM TIPS:
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