Googles XML Sitemap Technology
Most people are fairly aware of what a sitemap is and that it is useful for search engines as well as users. Most people implement a static HTML sitemap which is a good thing to do.
Whats an XML site map then?
Well, its exaclty what it sounds like, a sitemap implemented in XML. So that you can see what we are talking about, have a look at a basic sitemap, the one for this site. The SEO Files XML Site Map. This is in the typical XML format which means strict nesting of tags. This is the most basic format.
XML Structure and Protocol
Lets break this file down then. Firstly we have the URL set that contains the formating scheme from the Google XML Sitemap Protocol. You must always start your XML sitemap with this tag and end it with a corresponding closing urlset tag.
Next is the url tag. This tagwill contain all the information about each individual URL or page of your site. The first and only required piece of information about each url is its location. This is specified by the loc for location tag. Its simply the absolute URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of the page. For example, this page's URL is http://www.theseofiles.co.uk/xml_sitemaps.php.
What else can we specify?
Right this is where there is a lot of mis interpration. This is where we should not that in no way, no matter how many crazy theories you here, XML sitemaps (even if submitted to Google) do not and can not increase your rankings in any way! The point of an XML sitemap is to tell Google about the pages you have on your site so that it can help its indexing.
Rant out of the way! The other tags you can specify within your URL are lastmod, changefreq and priority. Lastmod is the date the file (at that URL) was last modified. This must be in the format of 2005-01-01. The changefreq is the frequency that the file (at that URL) is updated. This can be daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. Lastly, and this is the one that sparks the crazy theories, is priority. Yes this does tell Google to give a priority to certain pages. The value is between 0 - 1 in the format of 0.5, 0.8 or 1.0 for example. Putting 1.0 of higher has no effect on the ranking of the page. It is just a way to tell Google that your main pages are more important than the other sub pages. It will effect indexing but it makes no difference to rankings.
XML Site Map Information
- Get a Google Site Map Account
- About Google Site Maps
- Google Sitemap Protocol
- Google Sitemap Generator
- XML Site Map Generator
- XML Validator