Blog Oklahoma Podcast - Sitemaps

Using a sitemap I'm improving everyone's rankings. Find out how in a moment.

Welcome to Blog Oklahoma

This is the Blog Oklahoma podcast for Friday, June 6, 2008.

What is a sitemap?

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists the pages for a site, when those pages were last updated, and how often they usually change. This is done so a search engine can more intelligently index your site.

For more technical information about sitemaps please visit sitemaps.org.

For those of you who host their own blog I would suggest you read up on sitemaps. If you are using a blogging service like Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, Live Journal, or something similar. This information isn't going to do you much good. Unless of course you want to learn about sitemaps. Google at least I know indexes Blogger.com fairly well, mostly because they own it, but the also do a good job indexing Wordpress.com. As for other services, you'll have to get that info from them.

A sitemap is an xml file that you would need to generate yourself and upload to your server. There are service out there that can crawl your site and build one for you. But I'm not recommending that. This xml file is simple enough that you can use notepad to put it together. And this will give you finer control over what pages get index and when.

So visit sitemaps.org and look through the protocol. If you can do basic HTML, you can do this.

I've put a brand new sitemap on the Blog Oklahoma site. If you would like to view for an example visit, www.blogoklahoma.com/sitemap.asp. This is a some what large file. Not only do I have it indexing every Blog Oklahoma members profile page, but every blog entry of Blog Oklahoma's blog.

Another resource for you to properly index your site, is to use Google Webmaster Tools. Just do a Google search for "Google Webmaster Tools" and you'll all the information you can handle.

Most of it is written in plain English and fairly easy to understand and implement.

As for other search engines like Yahoo, Ask, or Live... to be honest I haven't researched them yet. I do know Yahoo does support sitemaps. As soon as I get to research those, I'll pass along the information either in a podcast update or on the Blog Oklahoma Blog.

Now by putting up this sitemap and getting Google to index every Blog Oklahoma Member Profile, I've forced Google to look at your site. Why? Well because I'm linked to your site. Google will leave Blog Oklahoma, crawl over your blog and see what there is see.

This is also why its important for you to fill in as much profile information as you can. The more keywords on your member profile page the better chance you can be found. Either by the Blog Oklahoma list or your site directly.

And as Blog Oklahoma gets properly index, Blog Oklahoma's listing rises up in Google results. And if Blog Oklahoma's ranking improves so does your sites, because we are linked together by mutual links. That's why it's important to have that web ring code or simple link to Blog Oklahoma on your site.

If you have any questions about this, just ask. There are several ways contact me. Just visit BlogOklahoma.com and you'll find them.

I'm still learning how to edit and produce these podcasts. I'm hoping you'll find them informative and entertaining.

The into music, is a mashup of Oklahoma! and Save Me by The Napoleon Blown Aparts which is available at magnatune.com.

This has been Kevin Latham your Blog Oklahoma web ring manager.

Remember, Just Blog Oklahoma!