The next SEO thing that seems intresting for SEO is the Contrib Google XML Sitemap
When you upload the sitemap(s) to Google, you make it easier for Google to search your site. The sitemap is nothing more than a xml page with all the different links of your site on it, nothing intresting for you customers. You don’t see anything on you site of the sitemap, only when you have a link to the sitemap you can open it. This sitemap can be easily uploaded to Google on this page: Google accounts . You need to create a google account of course. After that you can also use the account for the webmaster tools like Google Analytics (that will be the next contrib I’m going to install).
Warning: be careful if you copy any code from the blog. It is possible that WordPress breaks the code and that during copying whitespaces or other hidden caracters occur in your files, so always check if your codes look normal
Installation
- First just follow the installation instructions in the readme file to upload the files, install the sql file and go to the configuration settings.
- Then you have to go to http://Your_domain/googlesitemap/ on which the Your_domain is your site. If you have the shop installed under the catalog, then use http://Your_domain/catalog/googlesitemap/ and if you have it under another directory, just add the /you directoryname to the link
- You will reach a page with more instruction then, just follow these instructions.
- Finally you have to go to the page http://YOUR_DOMAIN/catalog/googlesitemap/index.php. On this page you have to see all the sitemaps that you edited as true in the configuration with stap 2 and the sitemap for the products and the sitemapindex.xml as succesful.
- You can now upload the sitemap to Google. I first uploaded only the sitemapindex.xml, but that was not a good idea. I don’t use the manufacturers and specials, so google said that these pages are empty. I deleted the sitemapindex.xml, and instead of that one, I uploaded the 3 that are filled with info: sitemapcategories.xml, sitemapproducts.xml and sitemappages.xml
- You can make a cron job to renew http://YOUR_DOMAIN/catalog/googlesitemap/index.php every time (i don’t know how to do this, but you can find info on the internet I guess). At my Window server, that was a little bit of a problem, so I have choosen to go to Uptime, here you can add the page you want to have renewed everyday and they will do it for you for free. Very easy, I also use this for the contrib_tracker.
Troubles/notes
1. When you have Ultimate SEO Urls 5 from FWR media installed, then you need to update the files googlesitemap/index.php and googlesitemap/sitemap_class.php, because otherwise the Google Xml sitemap won’t work. You can find the files in the contrib of Ultimate Seo Urls 5 onder the Extras. For now the sitemappages.xml are not working with those files, but maybe later they will.
2. Google says very fast if your sitemap is ok or not, and shows how many urls you have submitted. But the indexing of the Urls can take much moe time. With one of my sites, Google started indexing after a day, and the other one has nothing indexed for 2 days now.
3. You can exclude pages of the sitemaps. Just go to the configuration of Google XML Seo in you admin and add the pages under “exclude these pages” like reviews.php, product_reviews_write.php
Awesome information you have here. Thanks for sharing.