Google Sitemaps are an easy way for you to help improve your coverage in the Google search index thus bolstering your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts. The project is currently in the Beta phase at Google which means they are still working out the kinks. These Sitemaps will be used to inform and direct Google’s search web crawlers, in an effort to expand and improve their coverage of the web (as if they don’t have enough coverage already!). In the simplest form it is a way for Webmasters or company’s to submit and manage the information indexed by Google.
Google Sitemaps can be easily set up by using a current login to another Google product by going here. In digging into this a little deeper from a technology perspective you find that a Google Sitemap can be set up in a number of ways. I am going to outline the four that I found to be the most prominent:
1. Manually create an XML Sitemap file.
2. A simple list of URLs in a text file.
3. Use a server level Sitemap Generator script.
4. Use a Windows based Sitemap Generator.
Manually creating an XML Sitemap file
To create an XML file you would need to include all of the different info Google needs as provided by their specific Sitemap Protocol which is really just another way of saying their XML schema.
So when creating an XML file by hand make sure to run it through an XML schema validator to make sure you have included all of the correct tags, they are all opened and can closed and they match the order in the of the DTD. Next, place it in the root path of the site and let Google know where it is located. However, I would not recommend this option since manually creating XML is tedious work!
A simple list of URLs in a text file
Google strongly recommends that you use an XML format for your sitemaps, since they allow you to associate additional information with each URL specified. Though, they also accept sitemaps in the form of a text file containing a simple list of URLs. I would not recommend this method since it may limit Google’s capabilities with getting the most information out of your Sitemap thus defeating the purpose of the effort. However, if this is the only way you could create a Sitemap it would probably be better to have it in this format rather then not have one at all. Here are some examples of a simple sitemap:
http://www.example.com/catalog?item=1
http://www.example.com/catalog?item=11
It is just a list your site’s URLs.
Use a server level Sitemap Generator script
This option places a program on your web server with a configuration file that specifies where you want the program to look for paths and in what paths you want a generated Sitemap to be placed about completion.
Then upon running the program the Sitemap generator creates a Sitemap on the fly and places it on the server in your specified path. Most likely you would want to set up as a cron job every hour or once a day or so to keep the sitemap the most up to date. This would be the most automated process thus after the initial setup should be the least labor intensive. To find out more about the Sitemap Generator go here.
Use a Windows based Sitemap Generator
After doing some searching on the web, I found there are a number of free Windows based tools available for download that will help make generating Google Sitemaps easier. While this is still a form of manually generating your Sitemap, it makes the process less technical by providing a user interface for entering all of the URLs. The program than will generate a Sitemap XML file for you based on your entries. This XML file should already be validated and can then be placed on the correct path on your server. I downloaded VIGOS Gsitemap and found it to be an easy-to-use but versatile Windows Sitemap Generator tool.
Google Sitemaps are another way that Google delivers something with great utility since they will in turn better sync participating websites with their indexing efforts. If this does not directly optimize your site for a search engine, then I do not know what would. Today the Sitemap Generator script looks to be the most automated solution thus providing Google the most up-to-date information and saving time in Sitemap management. While the Gsitemap software also is a good option because it auto generates the XML sitemap once you enter some initial URLs through the user interface taking into account Sitemap Protocol and saving you time. Additionally, with Google Sitemaps still a Beta it is almost guaranteed that there will be other advancements to make Sitemap creation even more of a breeze.
