[jamesosix]

I tried reading up on them, but I just dont understand them. I know they are important, but I have not got the foggiest what most of it means. Please could anybody give me some pointers/help please?

So I would have this in an xml file:

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

  <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

<url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/aboutus.html</loc>
    <lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
    <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
</url> 

<url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/services.html</loc>
    <lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
    <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
</url> 

<url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/contactus.html</loc>
    <lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
    <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
</url> 

</urlset>

Do I have to add the lastmod, changefreq and priority tags? Does that information have to be accurate? I dont get it.

Help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[brightonmike]

You shouldn't need to be tinkering with the XML yourself.

All you do is use a sitemap generator online, they generate the sitemap for you. You just put that sitemap in your route, and tell Google Webmaster tools where it is.

If you're using a CMS, there are plugins to dynamically generate sitemaps.

If this is for a static website, just repeat the steps when you make site changes.

[jamesosix]

Are they safe? I heard some sites can inject there own urls and stuff or something along that line. I'm using both blogger and self hosted wordpress platforms (for various sites).

Also, do sitemaps help in getting ranked? I understand they help inform the spider that the site exsists, I just never done them before and still had good success with my previous websites.

Thanks for your info.

[brightonmike]

They can help you get ranked.

Use "Google XML Sitemaps" for Wordpress. Fairly easy to set up.

No worries!

[WebDesignBournemouth]

Sitemap isn't that important, Google most likely rewards SEO points if you have one or not. However the bots rarely check the sitemap, I have had many New URLS listed and Indexed without the bot even reading the sitemap, the sitemap is audited and not checked every time it skims your site.

Google most likely uses its own sitemap for your site and spiders the links from their, but occasionally checks your sitemap in case it's having problems following links.

[richwdf]

I would recommend you use www.xml-sitemaps.com which will generate the site map for you, it's free to use if you have less than 500 pages.

Simply enter the url of your site, select the change frequency (I generally select monthly but thats up to you), select 'Use server response' (i.e. when the file was last modified), then select 'automatically Calculated Priority' - though note you can always edit the final page in notepad or similar before you upload it.

The option for 'last modification' assists the search engines if you have made any changes to your website since they last visited - NOTE: you DO have to remember to update your sitemap whenever you make changes to your site or they might fly on by!

Once you click on 'Start' the site map will be created. If it's not a massive site then you can download it uncompressed as sitemap.xml - once you have done this you can upload it to the root of your server, i.e. yourwebsite/sitemap.xml

Once you have done that, either create a robots.txt file or edit an existing one and add the line:

sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

which essentially tells the search engines where your site map is.

It's very easy to do and does help in keeping your site changes up to date.

If you have Google webmaster tools you can also submit your new sitemap there which may well speed things up a little with the updates of your site.

Hope this helps.