How to Generate XML Sitemap for Your Web Site

In my earlier on XML Sitemap, I explained how you can make sure search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN find your XML Sitemap by referring to it on robots.txt file.

Recently MSN launched its own version of webmaster tool, Live Search Webmaster Center. It allows webmasters submit their XML Sitemap to MSN Live Search.

Your Sitemap for a URL could look like this:

< xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″>
< url >
< loc >
http://www.semseoexpert.com/blog/2007/04/submit-sitemap-to-google-
yahoo-and-msn.html< /loc >
< lastmod >2007-12-16T02:20:20+00:00< /lastmod >
< changefreq >monthly< /changefreq >
< priority >0.60< /priority >
< /url >

Some of the attributes that you can include in your sitemap are: urlset, url, loc, lastmod, changfreq and priority. For more details you may visit Sitemaps Protocol at sitemaps.org.

Weather you create your Sitemap using a free XML Sitemap Generator tool (e.g., xml-sitemaps, Gsitecrawler)or manually, make sure that you give more priority to most important pages of your site. Also make sure the code is written correctly by validating your code by utilizing an XML Sitemap Validator.

By Nima, Toronto SEO Expert
Similar Articles at www.semseoexpert.com/search-engine-optimization.

Filed Under: Search Engine OptimizationSEO

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About the Author

Nima Asrar Haghighi is an Internet Marketing consultant with expertise in SEM (PPC Advertising), Organic SEO, RSS, Social Media and Web Analytics (Google Analytics IQ Certified). Nima holds an MBA in marketing, B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering, Project Management Certification, and CIW (Certified Internet Webmaster) in E-commerce. You can reach Nima at +Google Plus or LinkedIn.

Comments (4)

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  1. avatar Prakriti says:

    I submitted sitemap to google, can i use same sitemap for msn too?
    Please help me out

  2. avatar Nima Asrar Haghighi says:

    Hi Prakriti,

    yes, you can go to http://webmaster.live.com/ and set up your site with MSN. Dont forget to add the sitemap to your robots.txt as well (http://www.semseoexpert.com/blog/2007/04/submit-sitemap-to-google-yahoo-and-msn.html).

  3. avatar Prakriti says:

    I was really confused thank you so much for your help. I want to ask one more question, previously(3 months ago) msn indexed homepage of my website but when I made some changes in title and keywords msn is not at all indexing my website, my website is doing good in google and yahoo. I submitted my website’s url to msn again but can’t get any positive result.Is that because of the changes I made or because of any other reason and how can I solve this problem?

  4. avatar Nima Asrar Haghighi says:

    Hi Prakriti,

    It’s hard to say without looking at the site. However, unless you have stuffed keywords, I dont see any reason why the site should have dropped because of the title tag.

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