Google Sitemaps
The key to getting your site indexed fast is telling the search engines that your site exists. The first step in this process is to submit your XML Sitemap to Google. I will cover Yahoo and Live/MSN in the next part of my Quick Launch Guide.
If you don’t have a Google Webmaster account, go here and signup for one. For those that have a Google Webmaster account, login to Webmaster Tools. Immediately after logging in, you will be on the dashboard page. In the textbox area, enter the URL to your site and click add site. You will then be taken to a page that informs you that your site must be verified. Click on the verify your site link. You are given two verification options; meta tag or a HTML file. My preference is to use the HTML file because it does not appear in the code of any of my indexed pages. This file must be uploaded to your domain’s root directory (same as the sitemap). Once you have uploaded the file, return to the site verification screen and click the verify button. Google will instantly confirm the HTML was verified.
To add a Sitemap to your Google Webmaster Tools account, click on the Dashboard button, then click on your domain, then click on the Sitemaps button in the left column. Finally, click on the text link that says add a sitemap. Here you are given a “choose type” dropdown box. Select the appropriate type, which in most cases is add general web sitemap. A window will appear underneath this dropdown box so that you may enter the URL of your sitemap. Enter the relative path to your Sitemap file (in most cases it should be simply sitemap.xml). Click the grey add general web sitemap button below it and your XML Sitemap is now waiting for Google to stop on by and index your site!
Most of the time Google verifies my Sitemaps within five minutes. It may take longer depending on how many other Sitemaps are in their backlog. Just make sure that you verify your Sitemap was accepted. It will return a status code of OK.
Please note that Google does check verification files and Meta tags often. Do not delete these files otherwise you will have to complete the verification process again.
Now that we submitted our Sitemap to Google, let’s move on to Yahoo Sitemaps.
