Today’s topic du jour: XML Sitemaps!
First off, what are they? From Google Webmaster Tools:
Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML Sitemap—usually called Sitemap, with a capital S—is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process.
Why Are Sitemaps Helpful?
Sitemaps are particularly helpful if…
- Your site has dynamic content (such as your blog where you post fresh, new content often),
- Your site has lots of pages that aren’t always easily discovered by Googlebot during the crawl process,
- Your site is fairly new and doesn’t have very many links to it,
- Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not linked very well to one another (or not linked at all)
The way Googlebot works is it crawls by following links from one page to another. So if you’re site isn’t linked very well, it’s difficult for Googlebot to discover certain pages. Although Google doesn’t guarantee that isn’t going to craw and index all of your URL’s, it’s a good idea to create a Sitemap to make it easier to do so.
Basically, a Sitemap will provide Google with information on:
- When your site was last updated,
- How often the content changes,
- The relative importance of the various pages on your site,
…all of which makes it easier for Google (and other search engines) to crawl and index your content.
Google XML Sitemaps Plugin
To create a Sitemap for your blog, simply download the Google XML Sitemaps plugin. The plugin will essentially generate an XML Sitemap for you that will make it easier for search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) to crawl and index your pages better.
Once you’ve installed and Activated the Google XML Sitemap plugin, navigate to the “XML-Sitemap” page in your dashboard under your “Settings.” You’ll want to create your first Sitemap by simply following the step-by-step instructions after which you’ll see the following message:
Then, if you’re using dsIDXpress, you can add locations (City, Community, Tract, or Zip) to your XML Sitemap from the dsIDXpress Options dashboard.
(By the way, did you know you can download a Test version of our plugin with test data here… Just sayin’…)
Once you’re done configuring your Sitemap, a URL will be generated that looks like this: yourblog.com/sitemap.xml
Some folks link to this page in their header, others place it in the footer of their site. Where you link to it doesn’t really matter since GoogleBots look for the sitempa.xml anyway.
Pretty simple eh? If you have any questions, as always, the comments are yours…
and the biggest myth? that sitemaps will help you rank highly
Hey Drew,
Yes!! I’m glad you said it because I hear that ALL the time too.
I wanted to bold this sentence for a more dramatic effect:
“Although Google doesn’t guarantee that it’s going to craw and index all of your URL’s”
You want your site to rank? You gotta put in the work and WRITE fresh, new content consistently. Period. No shortcuts. Not even a sitemap.
and the biggest myth? that sitemaps will help you rank highly
Hmm. Didn’t know about the sitemap additions in IDXpress. Is it worth my time to add multiple communities and zip codes?
Hi Stephanie,
You know, I’m at a cross-roads on this one… Because like Drew Meyers commented above, setting up a Sitemap isn’t going to automatically get your site to rank highly.
Personally, I wouldn’t worry about it. Of course if anyone has a different opinion or insight, I’d love to hear it.
To me, Google’s Webmaster Tools’ verbage is pretty clear: “Google doesn’t guarantee that it’s going to crawl and index all of your URL’s…”
I asked Drew & Jim Marks to weigh in here when they have a second as well 🙂
Yeah I wouldn’t go out of my way to build a bunch of random stuff into your sitemap…
If you want things to get crawled and indexed, t
he effort is better spent creating good links (internal and external) to the pages where conversion happens. WordPress has built in “pinging” tools that ping search engines as content is added, and you can also use services like pingdevice.com (which looks cheesy, but works). Bonus Tip: Twitter/Bit.ly is also REALLY good for getting things crawled and indexed…
The purpose of sitemaps is not to get your site to “rank highly”, it’s to make sure Google finds and indexes all your content. But Jeff is right, if you want Google to find it, make sure you have good internal linking to all your content. If the content can only be found in your sitemap and not linked elsewhere on your site, Google will probably assume it’s not very important.
Right, but there’s still no guarantee that Google’s going to index ALL of your content…
I would add one more thing here. If you have a bunch of light (junk) content, you should get rid of it and replace it with good content. Light (junk) content can take juice from the good stuff.
The purpose of sitemaps is not to get your site to “rank highly”, it’s to make sure Google finds and indexes all your content. But Jeff is right, if you want Google to find it, make sure you have good internal linking to all your content. If the content can only be found in your sitemap and not linked elsewhere on your site, Google will probably assume it’s not very important.
Hmm. Didn’t know about the sitemap additions in IDXpress. Is it worth my time to add multiple communities and zip codes?
I sure wish the dsIDXpress sitemap functionality worked with the sitemap function of WordPress SEO by Yoast. Then could get rid of the Google XML Sitemaps plugin altogether.
Do you have any suggestions for the “Priority” settings?
Hello??? Anyone have an answer to this?
Craig: Priority values are how search engines know what to crawl first. Pages with a high priority values get crawled more often. So an important page would have a priority value of 1.0.
For newer websites, the priority value can be set to tell crawlers what pages to index first.
We set the default to .5. You’re welcome to change them for communities that you deem more important. But as mentioned in the comments above, I wouldn’t spend an inordinate amount of time on this as I don’t ultimately think it’ll exactly result in more indexed pages.
In our Webmaster Tools with Google, we were informed that we have duplicate meta descriptions, short meta descriptions and duplicate meta tags. When we drill down further, they are derived from the /idx/(community, tract, city, etc.). Is there a way to correct these so that they are not duplicate, but still be optimized for search engines?
Have you customized the SEO Settings for dsIDXpress in your WP admin yet? This post explains how to customize your meta tags for length and to help mitigate duplicates: http://www.diversesolutions.com/marketing/seo-settings-in-our-idx-plugin-part-2-6640