Google Loves Your XML Sitemap!

I just hung up my phone having concluded a long (and wearisome) conversation with a client whereby I explained the benefits of having a sitemap for their 200+ page website. The company has a nicely laid out HTML sitemap, but that wasn’t what we were discussing. Rather, our conversation centered on their need for an XML sitemap, the type that is generated for the search engines, particularly Google.

About half of our conversation was spent discussing the differences between an HTML and XML sitemap, with the remaining time being my emphatic pitch for them to start using the latter ASAP. After all, this client has been upset that some of their most important pages were not being indexed by Google, a reason I determined by their use (or misuse) of Flash and lack of sitemap. When the conversation ended I convinced them to have their web guy call me to go over the steps he needed to take to fix a few of the Flash pages and to upload an XML sitemap.

For those of you not knowing the difference between an HTML and XML sitemap, I’ll offer to you a brief explanation: An HTML sitemap is what your customers use to navigate your site, while an XML sitemap helps the search engines find all of your pages. With the former, your map is visible to your site visitors. With the latter, only the search engines see what you’re up to.

During Google’s normal crawling of your site, they can uncover most of your pages, but sometimes pages with dynamic content are omitted while Flash and Ajax pages can also be missed. Also, if your site is new and/or isn’t particularly linked well with the other pages on your site, an XML Sitemap can find those pages too.

With a sitemap, Google can do a better job of indexing the pages on your site, although they do not guarantee that every URL will be picked up; you can tell Google how often a page is updated including the date it was last modified.

This particular client is afraid of Google, having been penalized in the past for employing certain Blackhat SEO methods at the behest of a now long-gone and discredited “SEO” professional. I ensured their team that Google doesn’t ever penalize sites for uploading an XML Sitemap and that it was to everyone’s benefit to have one in place.

If you are a WordPress user, a sitemap plugin such as the one from Dagon Design is an easy tool to use, while GSiteCrawler can handle most smaller HTML sites (usually 500 pages or fewer) without a problem. There are certain “industrial strength” XML Sitemap generators out there too, but I’m not familiar with them as my client sites are usually between 20-300 pages.

Once my client has his XML Sitemap in place, then we’ll take a look to see just how well everything is going. With Google Webmaster Tools we can examine the evidence to see what pages are being picked up, who is linking to whom, and what errors need to be fixed.

Finally, as far as being afraid of Google, just keep your nose clean and follow their rules and you should be okay. That means avoiding all of the goofy SEO experts who will lead you astray by promising to give you results beyond generally accepted means — just don’t give Google a reason to slap you silly.