Sitemaps and RSS feeds

What is sitemaps and RSS feeds?

Sitemap is a file which is having all links on a website. A user can know about the structure of a website through it. It is a pictorial representation of a website. Creating sitemap is the process to increase the optimization factors to be getting indexed well by search engines like Yahoo, Google and MSN. RSS means Really Simple Syndication. Let we discuss about this clearly.

Sitemaps are two types.

1. HTML sitemaps and

2. XML sitemaps (RSS feeds)

Both are serving different purposes.

HTML sitemaps:
HTML sitemap gives a complete picture of a website. It may be an ordinary html file. In this file links are arranged in a hierarchical manner. For example a main link may be there. Under a main link sub links are arranged. In the sub links also some links may be arranged. The use of HTML sitemap is to get indexed fast by search engines. When a search engine’s robot come to the sitemap it will fetch all the links at once. But no one can give any guarantee for crawling techniques.

A good example for this page is: www.seopageranktips.com/sitemap.asp HTML sitemaps are simply collection of links.

XML sitemaps (RSS feeds):
XML sitemaps serve two purposes. One is act like an HTML sitemap and the second point is an XML sitemap to submit into search engines for syndication. When it is submitted to search engines, anyone can subscribe your xml file. Therefore a subscriber can know about your available links. If you add any links in your xml file immediately that will be reflected on their feed reader.

We consider an example site to understand what RSS is (Really Simple Syndication). If our example site is property listing website, every links on our site will leads to a property. In this case we will have a sitemap.xml file and we will have all the links on that. If this is submitted to search engine everyone can know about our list of properties when they subscribe our xml file. This is called RSS feed. To read this feed user should have a feed reader which is available on net freely. By using this reader anyone can read our xml file. When we add a new property, what we have to do on sitemap.xml file? Just we have to insert a link for our new property. Then we have to submit our file to search engines. When we resubmit our file immediately users can be able to read our new added property also. This technology is called syndication.

Simple format of RSS feed or sitemap.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>

<title>Property listing website</title>

<description>This is property listing website</description>

<docs>http://www.yourdomain.com</docs>

<generator>Weblog Editor 2.0</generator>

<webMaster>seopageranktips@gmail.com</webMaster>

<item>

<title>My UK property</title>

<description>2 bedroom property located in UK </description>

<guid> http://www.yourdomain.com/myukproperty.html </guid>

</item>

</channel>

</rss>

Note here the node <item>, here we have added one link. If you add more links, you should have <title> ,<link>…..etc. Everything should be opened and closed properly.

How to submit XML sitemaps:
First you have to open email ids to submit Google and Yahoo separately. Both the search engines allow your feed to submit simply. Google provides a web master tool to submit your feed. Just go to any search engine and find the links like “submit your feed”. Then submit it. That is all.

Link Limitation of sitemaps:
You can have 1000 sitemaps for a site. Under that you can have 50,000 links. The file size is up to 10 MB.

Advantage of sitemaps:
Some sites may not be optimized properly on any search engines because of bulk usage of Java script, Ajax and Flash contents. In this case simply you can have a sitemap to syndicate or optimized better on search engines.

Sitemap generation tools:
Vast numbers of sitemap generation tools are available on net to create your own sitemaps. If your site is small or less than 20 links you can create your own sitemap for your site. If yours is complex with more than 100 links it may be 2 days of work to create your own sitemap. In this case you can go with online sitemap generators. They will create a site map for you with in 10 minutes. But you have to check the format of the sitemap. Following are popular site map generators.