There are two types of sitemaps, HTML sitemaps and HML sitemaps. A sitemap represents all the website pages in a sequential or navigation based model. Each site need to have HTML and XML sitemap. HTML sitemaps can be defined as a route map to your visitors to help them navigate your website while an XML sitemap is designed for Search Engine Spiders. Google webmaster tools offers a feature to integrate your XML site map with your Google webmaster account and this will help Google crawl all web pages effectively. In a dynamic store a new product or page is added, the site map can be rebuilt automatically by integrating an XML sitemap. Given below are the steps that you need to follow to submit your website xml sitemap to Google.
1. You need to create an XML site map of your website. There are many tools that help you generate xml sitemap online. My favorite tool is here http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Create an account and add your website URL and click make sure that you have the following settings.
Click on Start
2. Now save the XML sitemap to your computer
3. Connect to your web server using FTP and add the XML sitemap to the root folder. Now when you got to www.yourdoamin.com/sitemap.xml you will the the xml site map we have generated.
4. Login to your Google Webmaster Account
5. Click on Sitemap tab at the left hand side
6. Click on Add sitemap and type in the name of the file you have uploaded. In the above given case it will be sitemap.xml.
7. Click on submit
Now your sitemap is submitted and Google Spider will crawl your website soon. You can re login and check this after few hours. You will see this sitemap been crawled by the search engine spiders most frequently.
If you are a WordPress User, I would like to recommend you to have the XML Sitemap Generator for WordPress 3.1.2. This will rebuild your sitemap automatically after you publish a post. This is one of the must have plugin for wordpress
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I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
There is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points in Features also.