If you have not downloaded and installed the Wordpress Google XML sitemap generator, you should definitely look into it. The XML sitemap protocol will list URL’s for your site, as well as list additional information about each one, including when it was last updated, how often it changes and it’s relationship according to level of importance to other URL’s on your site. It is a great tool to have so that search engines can crawl your site more effectively. That, in turn, can help increase your visibility on the search results.
The Wordpress plugin is a great tool as it will automatically update your site whenever you post a new blog. Not only will it update your XML sitemap file, but it will also notify all the major search engines about the update. It is a pretty good tool to have, here’s an overview of how to install it:You can download the plugin at the Wordpress site here. Save it to your hard drive - I keep a wordpress folder on my desktop that I save things in so I can find them easier. Unzip the folder and FTP the full directory into your wp-content/plugins directory. Go to your plugin administration page from Wordpress and activate the plugin. It will automatically create the sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz files for you.
From your FTP interface, you can locate the XML files, right click on them, choose file attributes and change the CHMOD to 666. From this point, simply click on the options tab, XML sitemap and build the sitemap for the first time. Once it is built, it will automatically update your sitemap every time you publish a post.
Once you have this setup, go back into the options tab, XML sitemap. There are some additional options available that I want to point your attention to. If you have your blog on an existing site with other content, there is an option to include this in your sitemap as well. Just enter the URL under the “additional pages” tab. You can also give it a number value for order of importance ranging from 0-1. Scroll down to the last option, and you can prioritize how the pages are listed. A few tables above this, you can also dictate how it values your individual posts. You can assign more value to posts with more comments, newer posts or comment average. Finally, check under the “basic options” category. You can choose which engines it will automatically update your sitemap with. Yahoo requires an application ID, but the others do not.
Hopefully this has been informative. I think this is a great tool, definitely worth the 15 minutes or so it takes to set up. Go download and install it today, and be sure to check back in often as I will be posting more informative articles such as this. Good luck with your endeavors!
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