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 manager all of your sites. There's hardly a webmaster around who doesn't have a Google Webmaster account - 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!

From now on, simply "resubmit" your sitemap every single time you create a new page or post on your site.

Submitting a site to Yahoo is identical to that of Google Webmaster, as previously explained. You'll have to create a free Yahoo account, foremost. From there, you can then visit Yahoo Site Explorer - a free user panel that manages your sites and their sitemaps that will be listed on Yahoo's search engine.

To submit your sitemaps to Yahoo, visit Yahoo Site Explorer and create a free account. Add your website(s). Click the "Manage" button to the left of the website you've added. From there, type in the rest of the path that points to your sitemap file, and click "Add Feed." Yahoo will then add your sitemap to its queue. Don't forget to resubmit the sitemap whenever you add a new page to your site. (Note that Yahoo will not accept your sitemap until your site has been verified).

Many people are not aware that MSN.com (now known as Bing.com) also has its own version of the "Webmaster account" as seen on Google and Yahoo - probably because it is not very easy to find via a search engine search. It's called Webmaster Center, and you can simply add a site URL and path to the XML file. Just like Google and Yahoo, 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.

Bing.com's new sitemap submission site is called Bing Webmaster Center: create an MSN account if you need to...then, add your sites and point to their XML sitemap(s). Don't forget to use MSN's site verification feature - but note that it appears MSN's sitemap submission feature has died.

Now that the site has transitioned over to Bing, the sitemap submission process actually works (it was broken for years). All you have to do to notify Bing that your sitemap has been updated is to visit the following link (be sure to swap in the name of your site, and change the path to its sitemap if you need to):

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=www.MYSITE.com/sitemap.xml

Ask.com's method of sitemap submission is a little more unorthodox to that of other search engines, of whom have their own management account centers. To submit your site's sitemap to Ask.com, simply visit the following URL (don't forget to remove "yourdomain.com" and enter your site's URL/location to your "sitemap.xml" file):

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.MYSITE.com/sitemap.xml

It's that simple. The instant you visit that link, your sitemap is in the queue.