Moazam’s Blog

Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so search engine can more intellegently crawl the site. Sitemaps helps speed up the discovery of your pages.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo agreed to support the same sitemap protocol. Anyone using Google Sitemap do not need to make any changes, Yahoo and Microsoft will index those sitemaps.

If you maintain a small site with static content, you can easily hand code the Sitemap by following the protocol.

Bloggers who are using WordPress can use the XML Sitemap generator plugin for Wordpress, which will automatically generate a sitemap for homepage, posts, static pages, categories and archive pages.

Movable Type users can create a Index Template and copy the following code:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″>
<url>
<loc><$MTBlogURL encode_xml=”1″$></loc>
<priority>1.0</priority>

</url>
<MTEntries lastn=”9999″>
<url>
<loc><$MTEntryPermalink encode_xml=”1″$></loc>
<lastmod><$MTEntryModifiedDate utc=”1″ format=”%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ”$></lastmod>
</url>

</MTEntries>
</urlset>


Save the file to something easy to rememember, save and rebuild it.

You can now submit your Sitemap XML file to Google Webmasters, MSN LiveSearch, and Yahoo Site Explorer.

Related Links:

• Sitemaps.org
• techmeme: Search Engines Unite On Unified Sitemaps System