Free XML Sitemap Generator: Generate a Free Sitemap for Google

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Imagine that your website is your business filing cabinet. And imagine that you want Google (or Yahoo or Bing) to accurately understand and index your content / filing cabinet. But you – like so many others – are not the best organized businessperson. Your website – like your filing cabinet – isn’t well organized. Files are in strange orders with strange names. It’s not clear to an outsider what goes with what, not to mention what your website is “about.”

Enter sitemaps. HTML sitemaps and their brothers, XML sitemaps, help tell search engines what is located where on your website, how important these items are to you, and how frequently you update them. Think of an HTML sitemap / XML sitemap as a “map” for Google to your website. Guess what? Sites that are Google friendly do better in SEO. And one way to be Google friendly is to produce both an HTML sitemap and then an XML sitemap.

XML sitemaps are one way to get Google to index your website frequently and efficiently. Being indexed is the first SEO step towards getting to the top of Google’s free / organic listings!

Here are the steps:

• Generate an HTML sitemap. This is an HTML file, linked to from your home page, and ideally called ‘sitemap.html’ It provides an easy clickable path for Google to go from your home page, to your major pages, and from each page to every other page on your website. Especially if you are using Javascript or CMS navigation – which Google strugglest to read – be sure that you first have an HTML sitemap!
• Generate an XML sitemap. This is an XML (text) file that you create and will upload to your website – if you’re looking to analyse your text and want to compare xml and find diff online between it and another text, you can check out the TextCompare website. It is for search engines only, not humans, and it functions like the HTML sitemap to tell the search engines what is where on your website, its priority, and how frequently an items gets updated.
• Upload your XML sitemap. Put your XML sitemap in your top or ‘root’ directory as in https://www.jasonmcdonald.org/sitemap.xml
• Identify your XML sitemap in your robots.txt file. This tells all robots where your XML sitemap is located, so that they can easily index your website.
• Tell Google where your XML sitemap is, using Google Webmaster tools

You can do this all for free! Let’s get started!

After you have organized your website and created your HTML sitemap, use on of the free XML sitemap generators to generate an XML sitemap of your website. My favorite is XML Sitemaps at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/.

Simply go to that website. Enter your home page URL. Enter your change frequency (how often you update your site). Select automatic priority. Hit start. If your site is less than five hundred pages, this website will generate your XML sitemap for FREE.

Right click on the XML file. Download this to your local web directory (where you keep your website HTML files). Be sure it is in the root or top level directory.

Upload the XML file to your website. You should end up with it in this location: https://www.jasonmcdonald.org/sitemap.xml. That’s it. It’s that easy!

After you have generated your XML sitemap with the free XML sitemap generator tool, and uploaded it to your website, all you have to do is tell Google, Yahoo, and Bing that it exists. There are two ways to do this.

1. Edit your robots.txt file. You should already have a robots.txt file. This file tells search bots what not to index, and it also tells them the location of your sitemap.xml. Simply open the file up with notepad or another text editor. Insert a link with the full URL of your sitemap as in https://www.jasonmcdonald.org/sitemap.xml. To see how this is done, you can view my robots.txt file at https://www.jasonmcdonald.org/robots.txt.
2. Login to Google’s Webmaster tools. Click on your website. Click on site configuration (far left). Click on Sitemaps in the center screen. Click on submit a sitemap. Tell Google the location of your sitemap. Once you have done this successfully, wait a few days. Come back, and you should see a GREEN CHECK that indicates that Google has read your sitemap.

Good luck!