google sitemap tutorial

hi all
im newbie,and i saw in this forum a lot of people talk about sitemap but i didnt see that discussing about sitemap for beginning .

for example

1. what is google sitemap
2. what the benefit of sitemap
3. how to implemented on our site
4. trick and tips for sitemapping

please to tell me from beginning

thank's

 

I'll try.
I'm not an ace in GoogleSiteMap, but here's what I know.

Google sitemap is a way to tell Google which pages of your site you want to index. You just write the url in a text document (you can do a muuch sophisticated by using a xml document), name it "site-map.txt" and upload it to your root directory. That way you can maintain your list of url, and if you have to submit them again, it will be easier instead of going to the google "submit-a-link" page and do it for every url.


Some benefits:
- a better crawl from Google, since you have told it which pages to crawl
- reports on how you get traffic from Google
- report on how your page is viewed by the Googlebot


For implementation, see here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/overview.html
This is for different methods for creating the sitemap.

Here is an online sitemap generator: http://www.tarrantit.com/GoogleSiteMap/

To add a website, you log in your Google account (or create 1 if you don't have):
on site overview, click "add"
-select "General Web Sitemap" if you have your sitemap
- put in your url
- upload the html file you are requested to do
- when done, you can click "verify" on the "site overview"
- then you can put the url for your sitemap


See this thread http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=26806 for a tutorial of sitemap.

 

In its simplest form you just create a text file with all the pages you want google to find and let google know the url of this file. This works fine for me even with thousands of pages.

My site map can be seen at www. noble marine.co.uk/site map.txt (url broken as I see no need to get this indexed)

 

It's better to use XML fomat which allows you to specify several important things like (date when updated and more).There also have one good tutorial for it.(example sitmap file)

 

thank's for your explanation. is it work for blog and how we implementing on it ?

 

It works fine with blogs and there are plug-ins for most blogging software out there which generate XML sitemaps and update/resubmit them with new posts:
http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html

More info (tutorial, FAQ, knowledge base ...) here:
http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/google-sitemaps.htm

HTH
Sebastian

 

I use Vigos Gsitemap software. It hang if the site is to big but its ok for middle once. You can upload the sitemap from the program if you like.

 

i now use this one

The SOFTplus GSiteCrawler Google Sitemap generator

it really kicks in. Outupdate just punch start and it will check everything every site you have. Convert it and then upload it to your server and Ping google its great !!

 

sorry to butt in to your thread, but when i tried to verify my site with the filename of which google asks for u to make, i get this message

"NOT VERIFIED
We've detected that your 404 (file not found) error page returns a status of 200 (OK) in the header."

now i dont know how to change these error page returns, but i am using Cpanel for the website, but i also have access to WHM for the VPS im on. how do i change what is said above for me to be verified as the site owner?

 

I keep trying to get my blog directory indexed but it keeps comming back not verified. I have no clue what the problem is and the other sites I have listed in the same account all verified just fine.

 

You will either have to return a 404 error in your custom page (you can do that with PHP).

Or do as I did, just switch your custom error page for '404 file not found' off temporarily. You can switch it back on when your site has been validated.

 

thanks SlitheryImp, i worked out how to do it

 

It's all good advice for the first time Google sitemap'er, however if a website is already well indexed by Google, then i was to submit a sitemap, would Google delet ALL the current pages for that url first then only index the pages that are in the sitemap ?

 

No.
Google Sitemaps are just additional URLs for the Crawler Queue at Google. They are not exclusive. You can list your 5 top URLs if you want, or all of your URLs, or even URLs that 404 or redirect . Google uses Sitemap-files like it would use any link from your site.