Creating a Google Sitemap for Your Website

Website Sitemaps-
In general, there are two types of sitemaps. The first type of sitemap is a HTML page listing the pages of your site - often by section - and is meant to help users find the information they need. XML Sitemaps - usually called Sitemaps, with a capital S - are a way for you to give Google information about your site. This is the type of Sitemap we'll be discussing. In its simplest terms, a Sitemap is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your website, including URLs that may not be discovered by Google's normal crawling process.

What a Sitemap Does:
A Sitemap allows you to let search engines know all the pages you have available on your website. It is a XML file that lists all the URLs for a website. Sitemaps also allow you to give some information about the URLs, how often they are updated and how important they are compared to other URLS on your site. Having a sitemap greatly improves the ability of robots and spiders to crawl your website and share the information with search engines, which in turn can help your page rank. The more complex your site the more important it is to have a sitemap. Since Google is the top search engine, I use a Google sitemap on my website Sitemaps are particularly helpful if:

Creating a Google Sitemap:
There are many sites on the web that can help you create your Google Site map. Website Creations uses this one because it is both user friendly and reliable. In the middle, on the left you will see a spot to add the URL of your website. Be sure to add the main index page here. next set the frequency button (this is how often the pages may change or be altered by you),then click the "Start" Button. When it is finished you will have the option to save the file in different ways. I always save the compressed file

Step Two- Create the XLM File
Lower on the left column you will see a sentence like this: XML Sitemap content (249 pages) . Below that is your XML file. Simply copy that entire file onto a text file. Use Microsoft Notepad or another program that does not use coding. Name the file sitemap.xml

Now place the xml file into the sitemap folder. Make sure the folder has been uploaded to your site

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