As a technical SEO I get to audit a lot of websites, some good, some bad. By far one of the most common mistakes made by developers is not providing an XML sitemap for Google (and other search engines) to utilise.
What is an XML Sitemap?
An XML sitemap is an XML document which contains a list of all of the pages (or at least the one’s you would like to be indexed!) on a website.
Your XML sitemap should look something like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd" xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"> <url>
<loc>http://www.rutley.co.uk/</loc>
<lastmod>2010-12-07T13:39:54+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.rutley.co.uk/blog/misc/footfeed-send-an-email-ccing-all-footfeed-beta-testers</loc>
<lastmod>2010-12-07T13:39:54+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
...
</urlset>
What is the purpose of an XML sitemap?
Providing an XML sitemap allows you to inform search engines of the location of content on your website. Search engines usually spider your website in order to find new content/pages and can easily miss new content.
How do I get an XML sitemap?
If your site has been built on a CMS you may be able to install a plugin/extension/module which will automatically generate an XML sitemap for your website when you add new content. For WordPress Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin will allow you to generate an XML sitemap for your website (amongst other things).
If your website has not been built on a CMS or the process of installing a plugin is too costly/time consuming (or a plugin doesn’t exist) then you can generate an XML sitemap using a tool such as Xenu Link Sleuth.
Ok, now I have an XML sitemap, what next?
Now you have an XML sitemap you need to upload it to your website, the most common place to place it is on /sitemap.xml (e.g. http://www.rutley.co.uk/sitemap.xml). Once you’ve done this you’ll want to tell Google (and the other search engines) about your new XML sitemap – to do this add the sitemap protocol to your robots.txt file (click the link for instructions).
Sitemap: http://www.rutley.co.uk/sitemap.xml
And submit the sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools.
