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Guest post by: Carl Chesal Become an Author

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Is an XML Sitemap effective in getting your website Page Indexed on Google? Or indexed on any other Search Engines?

Creating and XML-based Sitemap and FTP'ing this XML Sitemap to the lowest directory on your website does alert the Google spider robot to review your website. It is an effective way to get more of your web pages indexed for your website. It is also effective, when you add new pages/content to your website, to:
1) regenerate a new XML Sitemap file, FTP it to your website
2) alert Google Site Maps to look at your site AGAIN NOW.

And now XML Sitemaps have just become even more important!

Google, Yahoo and MSN have announced that by January 2007, they will also standardize on the use of one common XML Sitemap file to index your website! All three mega search engines will now use the same XML Sitemap file to index your website.

So what are the steps in creating and getting the Google XML Sitemap file to your website directory?

These 4 Steps will get your XML sitemap file created and registered with Google:

(1) use a software tool to create the sitemap in Google's designated XML format. You can create a Google Sitemap for FREE (maximum 750 pages per website) at Sitemap Generator. Be patient with this FREE XML Sitemap file generator. It sometimes reports URL breaks (likely timeouts) when there are none. I found using it off peak hours (late at nite) generates cleaner files.

ADDED BENEFIT: The Sitemap Generator also creates HTML, ROR and Text Sitemap Files, which are used by thousands of other search engines and web crawlers to index your website.

(2) upload the XML file (and HTML, ROR and text files) to your website. You want to FTP the XML sitemap File created in step (1) to the lowest level directory on your website. There are many FREE FTP programs our there. Download the latest version of Filezilla. It is one of the easier FTP programs to use.

(3) Verification - notify Google of the existence of the XML sitemap file. This is done by registering at the Google Webmaster Tools. Follow the steps at Google Sitemap to Verify your website by FTP'ing the Google Verification file to your website and then requesting Site Verification. You need only do this verification step once. Under the Webmaster Tools Dashboard you will see a check mark for each of your sites that have been verified.

(4) Submit XML file – once Verification is confirmed by Google Webmaster Tools click on the appropriate listing under the Sitemap heading. Highlight the box next to sitemap.xml and then click on Resubmit Selected button. Your sitemap.xml file will now be submitted to Google for indexing.

From this point forward, whenever you change/add/delete links or add/delete pages on your website you will repeat steps 1, 2 and 4 so that the Google, Yahoo and MSN bots can re-index your website.

While you're at it, create a specific HTML Sitemap Page on your website to be used by other search engines and directories. This will help their BOTS and Web Crawlers migrate through your website. This Sitemap Page also acts as an index for your customers helping them migrate your website. Here is a sample Sitemap Page.

Bottom line: XML Sitemap files are an important ingredient in getting your webpages indexed in Google as well as Yahoo and MSN. It is equally important as the top two SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies, Keywords and Inbound Links. No excuse now. Just Do it.

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