Put Your Site on the Map with Google Sitemaps - Creating a Google Sitemap

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There are several different ways that you could create the sitemap file. You could download and configure the Google Sitemap Generator, use a third-party software application or create the file yourself manually. The Google Sitemap Generator is a Python script which utilizes a specially configured XML file to index your web site, create the Sitemap file and send the results directly to Google. This is a very quick and easy way of doing things, provided you have full access to running scripts from the web server that is hosting the site you're making the Sitemap file for, which unless you run your very own web server, is unlikely.

There are also applications that can do the same thing for you and much more. Some will generate an HTML sitemap at the same time as the XML Sitemap file to save your having to do this. These third-party applications often require a paid-for license to use, so they may not be the best option for everyone. Finally, you can create your Sitemap file manually, which is the technique we are going to be looking at in this article.

All that you need to do to create a Google Sitemap file can be done with just a simple text editor, so open the one that you use and we'll look at the code that is required. The Sitemap Protocol is written using XML, and as all valid XML files must begin with the XML declaration, this is what we start with:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

This just states the XML version in use and the type of encoding. Google Sitemap files must use UTF-8. The next element to appear must be the <urlset> element which describes the schema that the file must confirm to:

  <urlset
xmlns=http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84>

Next: Namespaces and Elements >>
 

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Comments On: Put Your Site on the Map with Google Sitemaps

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