Submitting XML Sitemaps To Google, Yahoo & MSN

• You Can Get Your New Website Spidered Quickly Via An XML Sitemap •
• Each Search Engine Handles Submission A Bit Differently •

I wrote a post the other day about how neat it was to have my friend’s new mini-site spidered and ranking highly within 24-hrs after I submitted an XML sitemap to Google. I mentioned I’d explain XML sitemaps, so here’s the info I promised.

First let me say that I am going to offer information here for the beginner-to-average website owner, so won’t get into how to add coding to your robots.txt file. I don’t even go into that file (I probably could if my partner Damian the website designer and coding wiz taught me how–I just haven’t asked him.) I don’t want anyone to leave a message that I neglected to discuss other means of alerting the spiders that your site is ready and waiting to be crawled.

XML Sitemap Explained

In the simpliest way I can try to explain it for you, an XML sitemap is a (XML) file that lists URLs for a site. Included in this XML file is additional metadata about all the URL’s (your pages) on your site. You can create a more detailed XML sitemap that will tell the search engines how often content changes, how often you’d like them to come and crawl your site, as examples. Or you can submit a very simple bare bones sitemap.

I must mention that it is very important to have a well structured website to begin with. Meaning you have a very good cross linking of all the pages within your site. In addition, you should have a “Sitemap” page that has a link to every page on your website–much like a Table of Contents in a book. In doing so, the spiders have a very easy time of crawling your entire site. Do NOT depend upon an XML sitemap to take the place of proper website linking structure.

For an idea of what a clean and simple website “Sitemap” page looks like, take a look at the one I have on my SEO-Innovation.com website.

The whole idea of using the XML protocol is so the search engines can more intelligently crawl the site. However, let me state that there are many SEO pro’s that say there is no need to submit one, because if you have structured the links within your website cleanly and properly, you’ll get crawled by the spiders anyway. And I cannot argue with that.

However … as I have posted previously, why NOT submit an XML sitemap upon launching a new site? Why NOT do everything you can to alert the search engines that your site is live and ready for action! This is such an easy way for a web owner to inform search engines about all the pages on their site that are available for crawling.

To say it another way … web crawlers usually discover pages from links within your site and from other websites that are linking to you. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the sitemap and learn about those URLs using the associated metadata.

You must be aware that utilizing an XML sitemap does not guarantee that your site’s pages will be included in the search engines, but they certainly provide a way for those hungry spiders to do a better job of crawling your site.

OK, Let’s Start With Google

Do yourself a favor and submit an XML sitemap to Google. In case you are not aware, in most cases, Google will bring you the lion’s share of visitor traffic. Like 65% or more. So, I’m all for at the very least submitting to Google.

Let me emphasize that Google allows you to notify them via your Google Webmaster control panel that you have uploaded the XML sitemap into your root folder. Each search engine handles submission differently.

Here is all the information on Google you’ll need to know: Sitemap Protocol Overview & How-Tos. Briefly, Google will give you a unique file name for your XML file; you will create the file and upload it into your website’s root directory; and then you’ll click a box in your Webmaster control panel that says “yes, I have uploaded an XML sitemap”.

How To Submit to Yahoo!

Yahoo handles it differently. You can make a unique XML file just for Yahoo, upload it into your site’s root directory and then go here to submit your site’s URL to Yahoo: Submit Site to Yahoo
You’ll see two choices:
1) Submit a Website or a Webpage – skip this option.
2) Submit a Site Feed – this is what you want. (Please note under this option it says you can submit an XML sitemap.)

MSN Does Not Accept XML Sitemaps But Here’s What To Do

You have to depend upon MSN’s web crawler, MSNBot, to find your site all by itself. However if your site does not appear on Live Search, you can send them your site’s address (URL). Because MSN does not accept XML sitemap submissions, go here MSN Live Search and enter in your site’s URL.

How To Generate (Or Make) An XML Sitemap File

You’re in luck! There are a number of free online sitemap generating tools that allow you to quickly make one. Search online and check out a few of the sites to find a tool you feel comfortable using (some allow a more detailed file to be generated). Most sites have clear information on how to go about the process.

After you generate the XML file, you’ve got to upload it into your site’s root directory. (Sorry but I’m not going to go into explaining how to do that in this post.) Again, follow all the steps for each search engine after you’ve uploaded each file.

That’s about it. After you’re done … you ought to see your site ranking in the search engines. But exactly what position(s) you rank for … well that’s up to all the other SEO factors we have to take into consideration. Good luck!