Site Map info for COMPLETE beginners
By Brian O’Boyle
I know that I am not the only person that needed site maps explained and so for complete beginners, here is some help!
The following image is a site map…..not to be confused with an XML site map. Confused? Well then your in the right place!
The above is a site map for your own use, to help you with your wire frame development for your website. The following is what is what an XML site map might look like….. (created with Free Online Sitemap Generator www.xml-sitemaps.com)
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<urlset
xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″
xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”
xsi:schemaLocation=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9
http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd”>
<url>
<loc>http://www.acemarquee.ie/</loc>
<lastmod>2009-03-24T15:38:22+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>1.00</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.acemarquee.ie/index.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-03-24T15:38:22+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.80</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.acemarquee.ie/about.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-03-24T15:38:33+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.80</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.acemarquee.ie/Services.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-03-24T15:38:35+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.80</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.acemarquee.ie/Marquees.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-03-24T15:38:36+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.80</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.acemarquee.ie/Contact.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-03-24T15:38:32+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.80</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.acemarquee.ie/images/acebrochure.pdf</loc>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.80</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.acemarquee.ie/M1Description.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-03-24T15:38:29+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.64</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.acemarquee.ie/M2Description.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-03-24T15:38:30+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.64</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.acemarquee.ie/M3Description.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-03-24T15:38:27+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.64</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.acemarquee.ie/M4Description.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-03-24T15:38:23+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.64</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.acemarquee.ie/M5Description.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-03-24T15:38:25+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.64</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.acemarquee.ie/M6Description.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-03-24T15:38:26+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.64</priority>
</url>
</urlset>
NOW don’t be scared by the above! Your not meant to make sense of it! Google is!! And its only a click from you to create. So now to explain….
An XML sitemap is a way of organizing a website, identifying the URLs and the data under each section. Previously, the sitemaps were primarily geared for the users of the website. However, Google’s XML format was designed for the search engines, allowing them to find the data faster and more efficiently.
Google’s new sitemap protocol was developed in response to the increasing size and complexity of websites. Business websites often contained hundreds of products in their catalogues; while the popularity of blogging led to webmasters updating their material at least once a day, not to mention popular community-building tools like forums and message boards. As websites got bigger and bigger, it was difficult for search engines to keep track of all this material, sometimes “skipping” information as it crawled through these rapidly changing pages.
Through the XML protocol, search engines could track the URLs more efficiently, optimizing their search by placing all the information in one page. XML also summarizes how frequently a particular website is updated, and records the last time any changes were made.
XML sitemaps were not, as some people thought, a tool for search engine optimization. It does not affect ranking, but it does allow search engines to make more accurate rankings and searches. It does this by providing the data that a search engine needs, and putting it one place-quite handy, given that there are millions of websites to plough through.
For more on how to implement your XML sitemap check out my previous post. In hope this will be helpful to someone as it would have been a life saver to me starting out! Any question….just ask!
