Help Google Know What Pages are on Your Site

Sitemaps are good ways to let search engines know what pages are in your site. Some say they help expedite the process of getting your pages indexed while others disagree. My theory is that if you have a good navigation system in place for your website, the bots will be able to navigate their way through your site with ease.

In order to submit a sitemap you first must have created one. If you do not have one there are several tools available to automatically generate them or you can create a sitemap manually.

Submit Your Sitemap

Once you have your sitemap created, you can submit it to Google Webmaster Tools. If you do not have an account, you can create a Google Webmaster Tools account.

• Login into your Google Webmaster account.
• Select the site from your dashboard that you wish to add a sitemap for.
• Expand the Site Configuration menu
• Select Sitemaps
• Select Submit a Sitemap
• Enter the location of your sitemap.
  
  Note: your URL is already entered for you so just enter the location. Most people place their sitemap at the root level of their site. If that is the case for you, then just enter the name of your sitemap.
• Then select Submit Sitemap.

That was easy. If you make modifications to your sitemap come back to the Webmaster Tools and put a check beside your sitemap and select Resubmit.

Once you have your sitemap submitted, you should monitor the traffic to your site with website analytics.