One important recent development that we covered in our September search engine workshop was Google Sitemaps. For those of you that are unaware, or struggling to get to grips with this important topic, please read on ...

Well constructed HTML sitemaps have always been good SEO practice in that they allow spiders to find each page on a site easily and with the anchor text of choice. They used to be constructed manually but assites have become bigger, software programs that create site maps automatically have gained in popularity.

A little while ago, Google further raised the profile of sitemaps when it introduced its XML sitemap feed program and it seems that at least some of the recent changes that many sites have experienced in their Google rankings are down to the increased importance Google is putting on a site having a site map.

One of our former Workshop students, Alison of Tectura Ltd, Microsoft Global Partner of the Year for ERP Software pointed us to a really useful tool for creating both HTML and XML sitemaps,Specifically designed to appeal to Google.

http://www.blocklayer.com/googlesitemap/Default.aspx

Although Google does offer its own sitemap generator, we found this one much easier to use.

Simply type in your website’s address and the Google Sitemap Generator will find every page on the site and build a sitemap, with sensible anchor text and descriptions. The sitemap can be built in either HTML or XML format. Simply upload the HTML sitemap to your site’s root directory, making sure you link to it from at least your index page (always use a simple HTML text link).

The XML format sitemap must be copied and pasted into a text editor (such as Notepad), saved as an XML file and then uploaded to your server. Finally it can be submitted to Google Sitemaps.

The Blocklayer sitemap generator can only handle up to 750 pages (but we wouldn’t recommend having a sitemap with more than this number of links anyway) but by using the filter it offers, multiple site maps can be generated. Simply filter out one or more sub folders for each sitemap to keep each one below 750 pages.

Google provides comprehensive information on its Sitemaps program at https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/faq.html

Coming soon! – Using Press Releases to raise your online visibility!

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