2. Submitting a sitemap

A sitemap is exactly what the name suggests – it is a map of your website. A sitemap includes the names of each page of your website and also the structure of your website. By submitting a sitemap to Google, the Googlebot can easily see which pages will be crawled through, increasing the chance that all pages of your website are indexed into the Google database. Sitemap submission is most helpful with websites where flash or AJAX components are present; the sitemap provStariding easier crawling for the spider. The sitemap must be designed in XML format and the protocol can be seen at http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php.

There are websites available that can do it for you, such as XML-sitemaps.com and Internetrix’s Freestyle content management system (CMS), which includes a built-in sitemap generator. The catch to these free sitemap tools is that there may be a charge for websites with 500+ pages. Similar to the addURL method, there is no guarantee from Google that submitting a sitemap will get all pages of your website indexed by Google. The sitemap can be submitted via the Google Webmaster Tool found at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dashboard.

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