A No-Nonsense Guide to a Professional Blog

I have to admit that to this day I had underestimated the power of Sitemaps. I had in mind to install a Sitemap plugin, and yesterday I finally did it. So far I was very satisfied with an exponentially rising number of website hits on my personal blog (2000+ unique visitors so far in March 2010, resulting in 20,000+ website hits), but since installing the Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress the increase is incredible! What I like most about the plugin is that it reports updates to Google, Yahoo, and Bing immediately after you have added a new page or post.

The plugin requires some settings, and the setup may be a bit difficult for the non-technical person. You also need to apply for a Yahoo Application ID, which is basically a formality, but nevertheless it’s something that needs to be done, and the whole setup requires your full attention. But, after all, it is worth the efforts!

What are Sitemaps?

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support Sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the Sitemap and learn about those URLs using the associated metadata. Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.

Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress

This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

More information about what XML-Sitemaps are and how they can help you to get indexed by the major search engines can be found at Sitemaps.org and the searchenginewatch blog.

Note: The XML-Sitemap format was introduced in 2005 by Google and adopted in 2006 by YAHOO, Bing (formerly MSN Search) and Ask.com so thats why it’s often called “Google Sitemaps”.

Installation

To install the plugin go into the Plugins page, select Add New. Search for “Google XML Sitemaps”, select the plugin offered by Arne Brachhold, and install it.

For further information on the plugin go to the plugin website at http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/.

To apply for a Yahoo Application ID (highly recommended) Request one here.