Since I added a site map to the site, traffic has went up. Not a huge amount, but there has been a difference. And I know that Google indexes it, so that has to be good. Don’t have one yourself? Try these. Most are v simple to install. Any questions, drop me a line.

What are sitemaps?

Here’s what the experts say:

“Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support Sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the Sitemap and learn about those URLs using the associated metadata. Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.

Sitemap 0.90 is offered under the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License and has wide adoption, including support from Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.”

What site maps plugin do I use on this

You can get all the details over here. http://www.arnebrachhold.de/

“This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of yourWordPress blog.”

This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. More information what XML-Sitemaps are and how they can help you to get indexed by the major search engines can be found at Sitemaps.org and the searchenginewatch blog.

You can use the following tools to generate or maintain files in the XML Sitemaps format, an open standard defined on sitemaps.org and supported by the search engines such as Ask, Google, Microsoft Live Search and Yahoo!.

Tools for creating site maps

Sitemap files generally contain a collection of URLs on a website along with some meta-data for these URLs.

• Google Sitemap Generator(Linux/Windows)
• Perl Sitemap Generator(Perl)
• Python Sitemap Generator(Python)
• Simple Sitemaps(PHP)

Content Management Systems

• ASP.NET
• Coppermine
• DotClear(Spanish)
• Drupal
• LifeType
• PHPNuke
• Textpattern
• vBulletin
• WordPress

Downloadable Tools

• GWebCrawler & Sitemap Creator
• G-Mapper
• IntelliMapper$
• KeyLimeTie Sitemap Generator$
• MediaCET Diadematus
• Microsys A1 Sitemap Generator$
• Site Magellen
• Site Map Pro$
• Vigos Gsitemap
• AuditMyPc.com Sitemap Generator
• Safe Area SitemapGenerator

• SitemapDoc
• Smart-IT-Consulting Google Sitemaps XML Validator
• XML-Sitemaps Generator

If you know any more or would like to recommend some, please let me know.

My inbox is open all hours.
Regards,
Ivan

PS – if you haven’t got enough to do already, you can follow me on Twitter @ivanwalsh

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