Publishing your sitemap
Once you have created a sitemap you will need to publish it to make search engines aware of its existance. This article provides an overview of how to publish your sitemap once you have created it.
Upload your sitemap
Download one or more of the sitemap files that you wish to use. If you download the zip file be sure to unzip it and upload your sitemap files indvidually.
We recommend you upload both your sitemap.xml and sitemap.htm file and upload (or update your existing) robots file.
Sitemap.xml is an XML sitemap compatible with Google and Bing webmaster tools.
Ping search engines
Once you have set up your sitemap you will need to notify search engines. One way to do this is to "ping" them to tell notify search engines your the sitemaps existance and then again when you update it.
You can do this using our Free RSS / Sitemap ping tool.
Robots.txt
The sitemap protocol states that search engines should be able to locate your sitemap from your robots.txt file.
The robots file is a set of instructions that tell search engine spiders how to process your website. You can create a reference in your robots file to tell search engines where to find your sitemap.
If you don;t have a robots.txt file you can use the one created by XmlSitemapGenerator.org
Webmaster tools
Both Google and Bing (which also includes Yahoo) have webmaster tools that allow you to regsiter your website and sitemap and track its progress and key performance data about your website. It is highly recommneded that you do this!
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