09 Oct 08 Adding Google XML Sitemap to your Wordpress

When it comes to search engines, top 3 search engines always come to our mind. Of course, they are Google, Yahoo and MSN Search. So, the Internet search world become very common from these 3 search engines. And it’s very important that your website is indexed to those big 3. Some may argue that ask.com is equally important.

Yes, you could say so.. If you believe google, yahoo, msn and ask.com are your main search engines.. This wordpress plug-in will just solve all your problems all at once. Because thse XML compliant site maps will create, update, modify and send update request to google, yahoo, msn and ask.com as soon as you have composed your article/post.

All the credit goes to Arne Brachhold, who is a creator of this plug-in. You can download the XML Sitemaps plug-in here. To quote what Mr. ARne Brachhold’s installation instructions, the list can be seen as below. Most important thing is, when you do the ftp, please make sure you use the program that can do “change mode” functions. Some ftp do not offer “chmod” commands for security reasons. I will use the direct reference from original page, so that your installation will go smoother.

Upload the full directory into your wp-content/plugins directory

Use your favorite FTP program to create two files in your WordPress directory (that’s where the wp-config.php is) named sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz and make them writable via CHMOD 666. More information about CHMOD and how to make files writable is available at the WordPress Codex and on stadtaus.com. Making your whole blog directory writable is NOT recommended anymore due to security reasons.

Activate the plugin at the plugin administration page

Open the plugin configuration page, which is located under Options -> XML-Sitemap and build the sitemap the first time. If you get a permission error, check the file permissions of the newly created files.

The plugin will automatically update your sitemap as soon as you publish a post. So, you have been successfully completed getting index in major search engines.

This will take actually less than 10 minutes, but the organic search from these major search engines in the future is absolutely priceless. Just keep track of your website stats or google analytics, you will see the improvements week after week.

** In fact, if you actually implement most of articles I published in past 20 days, you shall receive about 20-30 unique visitors a day, maybe more. But after this plug-in, you will soon double your traffic.

Adding Manual Sitemap to your Wordpress as a Page can be viewed here to make sure you don’t miss other search engines too.

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