How To Create A Sitemap For Google Indexing

You are going to learn an easy method of creating an XML sitemap for your website and how to submit it to Google for indexing

Sitemap Generator


First you need to generate the sitemap. A free sitemap generator I recommend is http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
It's a free service and will generate a sitemap for any website with less than 500 pages in seconds



Type in the URL of the homepage of the website you want to generate a sitemap for. Submit and a few seconds later you will be presented with your results which should look similar to this



You will notice that there are quite a few downloadable files.

The files you want are the html file and the uncompressed xml file

HTML file


This file is one that your website visitors will be able to access once you upload it to your website. It is important that you exclude links to your private pages or pages that you do not want the general public to have access to or indexed. For example your download pages.

Download the file to your website folder on your desktop.

You can either upload the file as is to the root folder of your website as sitemap.html or you could first add the sitemap to your website template and then upload it using your FTP to your root folder as sitemap.html

XML file

Download the uncompressed xml file to your websites folder on your desktop. Save it as Sitemap.xml. For some reason the Google webmaster tools account emphasizes the capital S.

Upload the Sitemap.xml file to your website's root folder in your hosting account. Again before uploading make sure you have removed the links to the pages you do not want indexed in the search engines

Submit website to Google webmaster tools

Get yourself a google webmasters tools account at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
The account is free and easy to sign up for.




Submit and verify your website in your new webmaster tools account

Verification is pretty easy. They give you a code to add to your site. You can either add the code to an existing page or load a new page with the code on it. Obviously you will need to be the webmaster of your site or have quick access to your site's webmaster to do this.

Submit sitemap to Google webmaster tools

To submit your sitemap for indexing, log in to your webmaster tools account.
Go to the dashboard of the website you want to submit a sitemap for
On the left side of the page click on the site configuration link. This will bring up a sub menu. Click on sitemaps on that menu.



The page that loads will have a tab on it that says submit sitemap.



Click on this and submit the exact URL of your xml sitemap

Once submitted you will notice that the status is pending. This soon changes to a tick mark when you site map has been accepted