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How to make a Sitemap
I have been asked by several clients about sitemaps. Are they important? How do I make one? What do I do with it after I make it?Yes they are important. Your page will automatically be better ranked with a proper sitemap. You can read all about the why from the experts at Google. First of all go to their site and sign up for an account. It is free.
This is a handy site if you are at all interested in how well your site is ranked. They also will tell you what you can do to fix any errors that Google might find. My advice would be to invest a bit of time here if you are selling product.
So how do we go about this task if you have a fairly large product site? You can do it the hard way and follow every link on your site. Copy the address and make a manual page. Or you can do it the easy way and get a software to do that for you. I have tried several and my favorite to date is CoffeeCup Google Sitemapper. This software will spider your domain or your hard drive and create all of the necessary files for you. When it is finished you can upload the files and register your sitemap.xml with Google all in one easy operation.
This software costs $29 and has a 21 day free trial.
I will write this tutorial using this software. Any of you that have read much on this site already know my philosophy. Your time saved is far more valuable than the worry about the cost of a piece of software. Plus not every business person is versed well enough in XML to make a proper sitemap anyway. Second I doubt any of you want to take the time to learn XML yourself.
For those of you who simply do not want to bother making the files yourself, I do provide that service.
In your open software window you will first mark if you are going to spider a directory on your computer or your domain on the server. I will do my server for this example.
I enter my website address and then click the options button below. This will open the options window where I can make a few setting that will make the outcome html easier for me to alter.
On the files and folder tab you can add files and folders you want to ignore. It will be a good idea to check the "use page title from the Title tag". If you have given each of your pages a title in the META area of your document it will use this as your link name generated by the software crawl. If you have a large site you will find this time saving over having to manually rename the visible links.
On the page color tab you can set up the colors for your background, page text and links by using the drop down at the end of each area. Simply click the color of your choice and if there is not a color you like go to the more colors area at the bottom of the drop down. I do not bother changing these colors because I will copy the information generated by CoffeeCup into my own web design.
The other 2 tabs are fairly self explanatory so I will not cover them. When you have finished entering all of your data click the OK button and you will be taken back to the main window and click next.
Notice in the main area is a preview of what the software generated for you. If you have made titles on each document it has copied those titles to your links.
Next browse to the folder where you want to store your sitemap information. Then click the save button.
The next window displays the files created and allows you to upload from the software. I upload mine through my ftp client rather than this software. At this time I only upload the images and the sitemap.xml. Once your files are uploaded make a note of where your sitemap.xml is located. You need the complete address. Next you click the Submit to Google button and you will come to the CoffeeCup website were you can enter your information and submit your address.
Fill in your email address and the address where your sitemap.xml is located and click the submit button. If all went well you will get the thank you notice below.
Next open your html editor and find your sitemap.html that was generated. Copy just the lists that have been created by CoffeeCup and paste them into your website template or design.
Link the map to your navigation bar and upload your document. Voila you have a great sitemap that matches your website. You can see my finished results here.
Good Luck and have fun making your sitemap. If you are going to be adding new product to your website often then investing in this simple software will be well worth the $29 you spend for it. It is by far the best I have yet to find. I have tried several free one on the internet but all took a lot of configuring to make them work.
