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jamesray50
10-20-2012, 11:47 AM
Do I need an xml site map for my website? If so, I do I do this? My website is Wordpress. Thanks.

Harold Mansfield
10-20-2012, 12:54 PM
A sitemap is most beneficial when you submit it to search engines. To do that you first need to open a webmaster account with Google and Bing and verify your website (Just follow the instructions).

Google: www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
Bing: Bing - Webmaster Tools (http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster)

For WordPress, you can install the WordPress › Google XML Sitemaps « WordPress Plugins (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/). Once activated yo can set it to create your sitemap automatically. This particular one will submit it to Google from the dashboard with your Google log in credentials.

To submit it to Bing. After you install it, activate it and run it, your sitemap URL will be http://www.topnotchbookkeeping.com/sitemap.xml. That's what Bing will ask for. either the complete URL or just the file location /sitemap.xml.

Yahoo and Bing are basically the same thing now, so you don't need a Yahoo account too.

jamesray50
10-20-2012, 01:04 PM
But, what is the purpose of a sitemap? Will it increase traffic to my website? Or place it further up in a search? Right now my blog gets most of the traffic. Just wondering if I should add one.

Harold Mansfield
10-20-2012, 01:08 PM
But, what is the purpose of a sitemap? Will it increase traffic to my website? Or place it further up in a search?

No. It alone won't do any of that. It helps search engines crawl the content on your site more efficiently by providing one page with direct links to all of the content on your site, instead of waiting for the spiders to get around to it. It can also act as a directory of content for your website visitors.

It's not going to kill you not to have one. But it is suggested by the search engines and it's free.

jamesray50
10-20-2012, 01:31 PM
Thanks a lot Harold :o)

fayt
10-20-2012, 07:20 PM
Site maps are extremely useful in SEO and for users to find certain things on your website. It index's all the pages on your site.

Gabe
10-20-2012, 11:01 PM
I echo what Harold and fayt said. There are human sitemaps and computer sitemaps, the xml is for the search robots. They're particularly helpful if you have a lot of posts without many deep links that aren't updated often or don't ping search engines when submitted, but most WordPress sites do. On older static sites it can be painful to maintain a sitemap, but a CMS like WordPress does it automatically so there isn't any reason not to have one. Yoast's WordPress SEO plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/) has sitemap functionality along with a bunch of other SEO features.

HireLogoDesign
10-21-2012, 10:34 PM
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc> Hire A Logo Designer - Logo Design Service (http://www.hirelogo.com/) </loc>
<lastmod>2012-10-14T22:31:46+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>1.00</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

Here is a code snippet of the syntax straight from my sitemap. Copy and paste from "<url>" to "</url>" and include all of the pages you want and other data for each.

Mine is located at .com/sitemap.xml. If you try this adding your site name you may find you have one already or if you dont. It could also be a different name or it could be located somwhere else. If it is not already up and not there, you may look in your file manager to see if you can find it.

Make sure you stay consistent with Index of / (http://www). or whatever you choose when filling in <url>|</url> portions.

If you coudln't find one ...and finsihed your sitemap saved as sitemap.xml you can submit it to google webmaster tools and see what comes out of it. Wordpress probably has tools to do this, but I typically do this manually from the start and add what I want and don't.

If anything its good to know how many of your pages are indexed ect. For example..I have 71/76 pages indexed...it won't show you which specifically to my knowledge.

HireLogoDesign
10-21-2012, 10:37 PM
I don't know why my url changes every time! I'm not doing this I swear. Where it says "Hire A Logo Designer - Logo Design Service " it should be http://www(dot)yourname(dot)com and all other pages ie. http://www(dot)yourname(dot)com/nextpage.html http://www(dot)yourname(dot)com/nextpage2.html. Remember that these are separated and included in its own <url></url>

EDIT: Holy Moly, even those are acting funny. You get the idea though!

Hope that helps.

ozetel
10-22-2012, 03:16 AM
Absolutely yes, I second and third the coments made regards the use of sitemap - very much a must do when it comes to SEO. It is a very simple task, especially for Word Press, because it is built in and an automatic process for you, once the necessary plug ins are all set up. I agree, it wont drive more traffic just by having one but it is one of the components of SEO, and highly encouraged by Google for the crawl functions.

Good luck and I hope it goes well for you.

Must say, I am enjoying the discussion around the world as I talk with more folk! Good to expand out!

Harold Mansfield
10-22-2012, 09:46 AM
I don't know why my url changes every time! I'm not doing this I swear.

It's a function of the forum software. It displays the Title of the page.

cobase
10-22-2012, 11:19 AM
Do I need an xml site map for my website? If so, I do I do this? My website is Wordpress. Thanks.

Hi there! With popular tools like Wordpress, there are usually add-ons that will give you the functionality you want. This tool looks like it will automatically generate a sitemap for your Wordpress site: WordPress › PS Auto Sitemap « WordPress Plugins (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ps-auto-sitemap/)

I haven't used that tool before (my site is not on Wordpress), but there are probably many like it so something should be suitable.

leszek
10-26-2012, 05:13 PM
to add on that topic, when you are using GETSIMPLE there is a feature to create site map automatically