Hello All! I am building my first ecommerce site for a friend thru godaddy, & need some help!
It is all active, & I’ve been to google, yahoo, & bing for the authentication meta tags, but am stumped at creating/applying a site map, how to “define webmaster tools”, the end process basically.
He’s a really good friend who was royally screwed by his original web developer, so I really want to do this right for him. ANY help or suggestions would be more than appreciated!!! Pretty please!!!
Peace All!
Julie:confused:
Hi Hippiechik69, welcome to the forums,
Looking for the sitemap.xsd ?
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsd:schema
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
targetNamespace="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<xsd:annotation>
<xsd:documentation>
XML Schema for Sitemap files.
Last Modifed 2006-07-25
</xsd:documentation>
</xsd:annotation>
<xsd:element name="urlset">
<xsd:annotation>
<xsd:documentation>
Container for a set of up to 50,000 document elements.
This is the root element of the XML file.
</xsd:documentation>
</xsd:annotation>
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element ref="url" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
</xsd:sequence>
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
<xsd:element name="url">
<xsd:annotation>
<xsd:documentation>
Container for the data needed to describe a document to crawl.
</xsd:documentation>
</xsd:annotation>
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:all>
<xsd:element ref="loc"/>
<xsd:element ref="lastmod" minOccurs="0"/>
<xsd:element ref="changefreq" minOccurs="0"/>
<xsd:element ref="priority" minOccurs="0"/>
</xsd:all>
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
<xsd:element name="loc">
<xsd:annotation>
<xsd:documentation>
REQUIRED: The location URI of a document.
The URI must conform to RFC 2396 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt).
</xsd:documentation>
</xsd:annotation>
<xsd:simpleType>
<xsd:restriction base="xsd:anyURI">
<xsd:minLength value="12"/>
<xsd:maxLength value="2048"/>
</xsd:restriction>
</xsd:simpleType>
</xsd:element>
<xsd:element name="lastmod">
<xsd:annotation>
<xsd:documentation>
OPTIONAL: The date the document was last modified. The date must conform
to the W3C DATETIME format (http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime).
Example: 2005-05-10
Lastmod may also contain a timestamp.
Example: 2005-05-10T17:33:30+08:00
</xsd:documentation>
</xsd:annotation>
<xsd:simpleType>
<xsd:restriction base="xsd:string">
<xsd:minLength value="10"/>
<xsd:maxLength value="25"/>
</xsd:restriction>
</xsd:simpleType>
</xsd:element>
<xsd:element name="changefreq">
<xsd:annotation>
<xsd:documentation>
OPTIONAL: Indicates how frequently the content at a particular URL is
likely to change. The value "always" should be used to describe
documents that change each time they are accessed. The value "never"
should be used to describe archived URLs. Please note that web
crawlers may not necessarily crawl pages marked "always" more often.
Consider this element as a friendly suggestion and not a command.
</xsd:documentation>
</xsd:annotation>
<xsd:simpleType>
<xsd:restriction base="xsd:string">
<xsd:enumeration value="always"/>
<xsd:enumeration value="hourly"/>
<xsd:enumeration value="daily"/>
<xsd:enumeration value="weekly"/>
<xsd:enumeration value="monthly"/>
<xsd:enumeration value="yearly"/>
<xsd:enumeration value="never"/>
</xsd:restriction>
</xsd:simpleType>
</xsd:element>
<xsd:element name="priority">
<xsd:annotation>
<xsd:documentation>
OPTIONAL: The priority of a particular URL relative to other pages
on the same site. The value for this element is a number between
0.0 and 1.0 where 0.0 identifies the lowest priority page(s).
The default priority of a page is 0.5. Priority is used to select
between pages on your site. Setting a priority of 1.0 for all URLs
will not help you, as the relative priority of pages on your site
is what will be considered.
</xsd:documentation>
</xsd:annotation>
<xsd:simpleType>
<xsd:restriction base="xsd:float">
<xsd:minInclusive value="0.0"/>
<xsd:maxInclusive value="1.0"/>
</xsd:restriction>
</xsd:simpleType>
</xsd:element>
</xsd:schema>
I appreciate the quick response! However, I’m not exactly sure what to do with what you gave me.
I understand most of what information needs to be placed in this, ie. frequency of changes, etc., but am not sure where to insert this sitemap, as I used godaddy’s site builder/template, & don’t know how to access the actual code of the page. Could you help instruct me on the placement as well? I’m just a chick with just enough knowledge of this stuff to be dangerous trying to help a friend!
Thanks!
Julie
The sitemap.xml file is just that, an XML file. It goes under the site’s top level folder, i.e. here the “home” or “index” page is. That’s where Google looks for it, although you should submit it to them too. In my experience, very quick results.
You don’t need to link to it from any of your pages, it’s not the same thing as a “Sitemap page” that’s for human visitors. To see a site’s map, assuming they have one, do an HTTP request for whatever.domain.com/sitemap.xml and you’'ll get an idea, good or otherwise, of what others are doing. Note that if the site has more than 50,00 pages you need to do things a bit differently (siteindex.xml), but I’m guessing you don’t need to worry about that yet.
The file should have every page you want the search bots to find in it at least once (no need for the “identical” “canonical” URLs). If you have a small site you could even write it manually. But if the site has lots of pages, it would be easier to find a “sitemap” app to crawl the site and create it for you. I’ve used phpSitemapNG before, but now I just edit the file manually from time to time. If you search for “xml sitemap creator” you’ll find lots of links to apps, including Google’s which is probably the one I’d try first. The XSD file is used to “validate” the XML file to ensure it meets Google’s requirements. I wouldn’t worry about that yet unless you get an “error” message of some sort when you submit the file. I posted it so you could see the requirements. But I imagine if you use Google’s creator you won’t need to worry about it failing, seems they should have all that under control.