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A Brief Overview of XML Sitemaps
August 13, 2008 by Erik Cunningham
Most SEOs are already familiar with the benefits of and steps required to create and submit an XML Sitemap to search engines but I thought I would cover it briefly to lay the groundwork for my next topic, Geo Sitemaps.
An XML Sitemap is a great way to keep search engines informed of additions and changes to your website. Here is an example of the XML code contained within an XML Sitemap:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84″>
<url>
<loc>http://www.yourdomain.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2008-08-13</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.yourdomain.com/subpage.html</loc>
<lastmod>2008-08-13</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
</urlset>
You’ll want to repeat the code located between and including the <url> and </url> tags for every page of your website. Here is a brief description of the elements located between the URL tags.
<loc> is the URL of your webpage.
<lastmod> refers to the last date the webpage was edited. The accepted format is yyyy-mm-dd.
<changefreq> is an estimate of how often the content of the page is updated. Accepted values include: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and never.
<priority> is the importance you assign to the page in relation to other pages of your site where “.01″ is least important and “1.0″ is most important.
You can build your own XML Sitemap with a text editor like NotePad. Save the text file as “sitemap.xml”, upload it to your website and submit it to search engines through Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and Live Webmaster Center.
— SEO — Tags: google webmaster tools, live webmaster center, xml sitemap, yahoo site explorer
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