Let’s start with a small exercise. Pick up any random term and search for it on the internet. Now when the search results come up, visit the top 10 websites on the page and see if you can find something in common. Most people will look for similarity in design and colors or images. Try and look beyond the obvious if you can. It isn’t that easy to find or locate but it is one of the most powerful tools that will help you get listed on the first few search results pages. Yes, I am talking about the sitemap. It might be hidden amidst banners and links and text and flash. It might be right at the bottom of the page or it might be right at the top but it surely will be present on each and every website on the first search results page. What is it about the sitemap that makes it so powerful? Does it mean that a website without a sitemap will never get indexed?
What a sitemap is all about
An XML sitemap is a guide for search engines. It tells the search engines about each URL in your website and when it has been last updated. This gives the search engine robots a pretty good idea about how frequently a page is updated and how frequently, they should be scanning it. It is almost like helping the search engines with a more precise and intelligent approach towards scanning your website.
Recent developments
In November 2006, the three top search engines (MSN, Yahoo! and Google) joined forces to create and support a new industry standard for website sitemaps. This version is called sitemaps 0.90. Any webmaster, who wishes that his website be indexed frequently by all major search engines, must follow the protocols as per sitemap 0.90.
How to create a sitemap
This isn’t very difficult. All web hosting providers have a section in their user control panel which allows you to create an XML sitemap. If you have any doubts about it, then you can always get in touch with your hosting provider. Other than this, there are tools on the internet which let you create a sitemap for free. Xml-sitemaps.com is one such website with a wonderful utility that creates a sitemap in as less as one minute. There are other tools as well on the same website which will help you with sitemaps.
Submitting to search engines
Each search engine has a different portal for webmasters willing to submit a sitemap. I have covered Google in this article. The others also follow a very similar methodology. Firstly, you need to have an account with Google. In case you do not have it, I recommend that you sign up for one. It hardly takes a couple of minutes but it gives you access to a huge load of webmaster tools that will prove to be crucial in the long run.
Once you have an account with Google, log in to your account. Then click on a link called webmaster tools on the main account page. The rest is pretty self explanatory. One important point that needs mention is that Google will first ask you to verify that you are the rightful owner of the website that you have submitted to it. This can be done by adding a Meta tag that Google will give you or adding an HTML page to your website. Once again the process is very easy and should hardly take a few minutes of your time.
Other than submitting your sitemap, you can also use the webmaster diagnostic tools to learn about any potential problems with your website.
Good luck!
