Register a Sitemap with Google

A sitemap is like a Table of Contents for your website except instead of flipping pages to get to the page listed, you just click and you’re there. Sitemaps list all pages on your website and are a great way to help your customers find your information quickly and easily.

What many people don’t realise is that search engines also love sitemaps. Instead of crawling through your entire website trying to find everything, they can go directly to your sitemap. When you make updates to your website, your sitemap updates automatically so search engines and customers always see an up-to-date list. This is especially useful if you write blog posts or news.

To get more of your webpages listed on Google (not just your homepage) and to keep Google up to date with any changes to your website content, you should:

1. Create a Search Engine-friendly Site Map
2. Register the sitemap with Google through Webmaster Tools

How to Create a Sitemap for Google

(you may need to ask your Website designer to upload your sitemap files if you don’t have ftp access to your site)

1. Download the XML Sitemap Plugin
2. Activate the plugin on your website
3. Create 2 empty files called sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz and upload them to your main WordPress directory (the same place as the wp-config.php file)
4. Change the permissions on these 2 files to 666
5. Go to the new XML Sitemap page under your WordPress settings menu
6. Click on build sitemap link at the top
7. Change other settings as required

How to Register Your Sitemap with Google

(You will need a free Google account)

1. Go to Google’s Webmaster Tools homepage
2. Login using your Google username and password
3. Click the Add Site button
4. Type your website address in the box
5. Verify Your site (upload an html file and upload using ftp or add a metatag to your WordPress theme’s header file above </head>)
6. Select the Sitemaps tab on the left
7. Click on Add General Sitemap
8. Type sitemap.xml after your website address and submit.

The Results
Check back in about 24 hours to see if your pages have been listed. Before I registered my sitemap with Google, I had 3 webpages indexed by Google, now I have 98 pages indexed and a corresponding jump in traffic to my website.

Trust me its work's ^^