Sitemaps in XML Format and Submission

A sitemap is a way of organizing a website, identifying the URLs and the data under each section. Its intended use is to allow search engines to track URLs more efficiently.

urlset tag - Encloses the file and references the current protocol standard.

loc tag - Contains the URL of a file.

proiority tag - List the priority of this URL compared to the other URLs on your site.


Sample Sitemap - click on code to make larger

As you can see from the XML above, the parent tag goes first followed by the child tags.




Escape Codes must be used for the characters below.




Submitting a Sitemap

Google

1. www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps


2. To submit a sitemap to Google, to must first create a Google email account if you have not already done so.


3. Click the “Add a site…” button and add your url.


4. You will be asked to verify your site by either downloading a file and putting it in your wwwroot directory or by modifying your site index page by inserting a meta tag.


5. Once your site is verified by Google, click on the “Site configuration” link.


6. Click the Sitemaps link.


7. Click the “Submit a Sitemap” button, entered the name of the site map at your root directory and click the “Submit Sitemap” button.


8. Your status will show a clock for “pending”. The next day it will show a check mark for “ok”.

This does not mean that Google has indexed your site yet, just that your sitemap has been submitted and accepted.

Bing

1. Bing does not accept sitemaps. They expect their web crawler to find your site.

Ask

1. Ask does not have a sitemap submission form. To let Ask to know about your sitemap, you must use their ping service.


2. Type in http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.NameOfSite.com/NameOfSitemap.xml in your browser.

Yahoo

1. Yahoo works much the same way that Google does. Go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit/


2. Enter your url (ex: www.wardlawclaims.com) and click the “Submit URL” button.


3. You will be asked to create a yahoo email account if you don’t already have one.


4. Click on the “Submit a Website or Webpage” link.


5. As with Google you will be asked to download a file to your wwwroot directory or insert a meta tag to your index page.


6. Once your website has been verified. Click the “Feeds” link, type the name
   of you xml sitemap file and click the “Add Feed” button.


7. Your status will show pending until it has been submitted to Microsoft then a check mark will be (usually the next day) display when it has been processed.

Again this does not mean that Yahoo has indexed your site, just that your sitemap has been submitted and accepted.