Sitemap Submission

Sitemaps, typically created as an XML file, define your site's structure. They list all of the contents of your site, in a "tree" directory. The purpose of an XML file is to let search engines know your site's hierarchy - which pages branch off of which other pages, and so forth. The main point is to help search engines understand exactly what your site is about, so that it can properly rank your site in search results.

With that being said, having a sitemap is extremely important for proper site indexing. Creating a sitemap is a simple process, with free services like XML-sitemaps.com, and many other free sitemap generators out there. These services simply ask you for your website address. They will then crawl your entire site and generate a valid sitemap.xml file for you, which you can simply upload to your root directory. From there, you can tell search engines where this file is located in your web account, and they'll begin indexing your pages! The actual sitemap submission task is the easy part.

Google has the nicest sitemap submission method around: it's called Google Webmaster, and it's a fully functional administration panel that you can use to manage all of your sites. It is an invaluable free service that lets you monitor your sites, beyond what Analytics can do for your site statistics. To submit a sitemap to Google, create a free Google Webmaster account. Add your site(s) directly on the front page, then click its link, and look for the "Sitemaps" link on the left bar. Click "Add sitemap" and follow the instructions. Type in the remainder of the URL to let Google know where that particular site's XML sitemap is located...save, and you're done!

Many people are not aware that Bing.com also has its own version of the "Webmaster" account as seen on Google. It's called Bing Webmaster Center, and you can simply add a site URL and path to its XML file within it. Just like Google, it also asks you to upload a file for site verification, in which you'll have to copy and paste some code into an XML file, and upload that file to the root directory.

Yahoo's old "Webmaster" account, originally called "Yahoo Site Explorer," no longer exists. In 2011, it merged with Bing Webmaster Tools (see above). Because of this, Bing Webmaster Tools manages website administration on both Bing and Yahoo. So, when you submit your XML sitemap to it, it will update both search engines with your new information.

Let's face it, Ask.com died as a search engine a long time ago. However, you can still submit a website's sitemap to it, if you wish. However, it will have to be done manually. If you'd like to submit your XML sitemap to Ask.com, simply type in the following in your browser's search bar: http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.MYSITE.com/sitemap.xml, where "MYSITE.com" = your domain name.