Google Webmaster Tools, Sitemap Yummies

By David Golding |  Print This Post

I’m grateful that Google has begun to help us out a little. First, it was analytics software handed out for free that had me feeling a little less beat-down by the big dogs. But now that they’ve improved their backend tools for webmasters, I’m thinking it may be worthwhile to go back to fighting for top positions in their index.

You see, I’ve gotten a little complacent about it all. Not that it’s not worth it… In fact, “organic” leads to your site actually drive better customers because they trust it more. It’s like reading a newspaper headline versus the advertisement on the next page. People just place more trust in the body text of the paper, despite slanted editing sometimes. It’s been rather comical to me all the “expert” advice people try to give, like they really know anything. Matt Cutts is sought after simply because he blogs from the inside of Google. Well, maybe he does know something, but he never shares very much in my book. And other gurus just spout out the same old things, year after year. It gets a little dry. There’s more to life on the internet than Google.

Alright, enough with the woe-is-me-Google-is-too-ubiquitous diatribe. Really, I started this post wanting to tell y’all that if you haven’t worked with Google’s sitemap tools, you ought to.

First, sign up with a Google account if you haven’t already. Then log in using the Sitemaps page. Next to “Add a Site” type in the URL of the desired domain name.

When you create a sitemap, it’s as simple as pasting the following XML code:

For each link you want to be included in the site map, just repeat the

entry and add the absolute URL in the

tags.

Once you’ve uploaded the sitemap.xml file to your server, then click “Add Sitemap” and enter the URL to the file. Google will then be able to parse through the site map file and use it for the next runs of the Googlebot indexing machine. You may want to verify your site as well. To do this, you go back to the main log in page and run through the check list. It will ask you to paste a line of code into the header tags of your home page. Then you notify Google that it’s there and it will verify it. Googlebot is now prepped to scan your site and follow the links you have provided. This doesn’t guarantee any higher rankings in the engine, but you should get included in their index faster than by simply using the Google Add URL page.

Lest you think that is the end of it, go back to the “Manage Site” links on the main login page and select your site. You’ll notice three tabs in the top left on the following screen: Diagnostic, Statistics, and Sitemap. Click on Statistics and you’ll find more details on which keywords pull up your site and what your ranking is. Finally! Some help from Google! No more paying people to pore over the rankings looking for where you turn up. Google just tells you here what’s working for you and what’s not. When you combine this with their Analytics tools, all of which are free, then you can begin to analyze the search happenings of your site over the web.

So go to! Enjoy the extra help from the Google clan!

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