Please let me know if this is correct:

 

To create a sitemap you can put a .txt file in your highest-level directory and sumbit it on the google webmaster tools.

 

You then list the pages in this .txt file e.g

 

http://sussexwebsitedesign.com/services.html

http://sussexwebsitedesign.com/seo.html

etc

 

Please let me know if this is correct?

 

Also do you put the index page in as:

 

http://sussexwebsitedesign.com/index.html or http://sussexwebsitedesign.com

Generally, xml sitemaps are better

 

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

 

Just fill the details in an it'll make it for you.

 

http://sussexwebsitedesign.com/index.html or http://sussexwebsitedesign.com

 

Whichever one you want to use for SEO purposes

 

http://sussexwebsitedesign.com/index.html

http://sussexwebsitedesign.com

http://www.sussexwebsitedesign.com/index.html

http://www.sussexwebsitedesign.com

 

Are four different addresses, ideally you want to use a 301 redirect to convert it to one address.

 

If four people link each to a different address above, then really as far as search engines go you only have one link to that page, because they're four different pages. Four links is better than one, so use a 301 redirect to merge them to one address.

Thank you for your help. I have used the link and uploaded it to Google. Hopefully this should work a treat.

 

I don't know much about the 301 redirect page, but will look into it. Thank you!

301 is a htaccess permanently moved redirect. It basically informs the search engine that the page has been moved permanently.

 

This is an example of roughly what it should look like. (this one will force a domain to use the www.)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

 

P.S creating htaccess on a windows machine is a bugger, you might have to rename it via ftp because it has no file name, just the extension .htaccess

 

Edit: there's a nice article on 301 redirects here: http://www.stevenhargrove.com/redirect-web-pages/

 

Just found this too, which i shall be bookmarking, looks promising http://www.htaccesseditor.com/en.shtml#a_redirect