How to Sitemap — Automatically Generate Sitemap For Free

Which Type of Sitemap Do You Need?

 

There are mainly two types of sitemaps: HTML sitemap and XML sitemap, and they are designed for dealing with different issues about websites. Therefore, before you start to learn how to sitemap, you need first know which type of sitemap suits your needs.

 

A HTML sitemap is a page listing all or most of your web pages, and probably grouping those pages into different categories and subcategories for better review. It is geared to guiding visitors to the exact pages they are looking for. And compared with XML sitemap, it is more user-friendly. So if you want to improve the user experience of your site, you need a HTML sitemap.

 

An XML sitemap is also a web page list. But unlike HTML sitemap, it consists of XML tags which are not readable for common visitors. With additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site), it is more like a note written for search engine crawlers to properly and timely crawl URLs of a site. An XML sitemap is very necessary for a site with indexing problems.

 

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How to Build Sitemaps for My Site?

 

Have made your decision? Then you can start sitemap building right now. There are two ways to build sitemaps for your site: automatically or manually. Finding a trustworthy free sitemap generator to automatically build sitemaps is the easiest, and you can directly jump to How to make Site map in the Easiest Way to see how this tool works.

 

But if you insist on doing it yourself, you can learn how to sitemap manually from scratch: first you should know what a standard sitemap looks like, and follow the sitemap template to create your sitemap with plain-text editor or Dream Weaver (using HTML or XML tags to add URLs and the metadata about each URL); if you're creating a HTML sitemap, take the page layout (the arrangement, style of the sitemap and classification system of all your web pages) into consideration so as to provide the clearest and most efficient guidance to visitors; if you're creating an XML sitemap, make sure that it is no larger than the limitation imposed by Sitemap protocol (50,000 URLs, 10 MB), otherwise you need to break it into smaller sitemap files and group them by using Sitemap index file; after the creation, you should upload the sitemap to your server (and if it is an XML sitemap, you have to validate it according to the XML schema in advance) and ping search engines of this sitemap. And there is more—every time you make changes on your site, you have to start this whole process once again.

 

Let's face it—it is so tedious and backbreaking to manually build a sitemap. Why not try out this free and fully functional sitemap generator—SiteMap X, to learn how to site map in the easiest way?

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How to Sitemap in the Easiest Way?

 

SiteMap X can instantly generate different types and styles of standard sitemaps according to your needs, automatically upload it to your server, and immediately ping search engines every time there are changes on your site. Moreover, it is totally free and its functions even exceed the paid sitemap generators!

 

All you need is: download and install SiteMap X—give it a start URL (any URL of the web pages on your site will do), and fill the required fields under the tab "Settings" and "FTP&PING"—click on "Crawl", you can make SiteMap X automatically crawl your site in up to one minute (no matter how large your site is)—after the crawling, click on "Next", then you will get a detailed report of the crawled pages (the metadata about each page also included), along with the error pages on your site—click on "Edit", you can make modifications to the metadata or delete some pages—click on "Generate", then you will find that SiteMap X instantly accomplish website sitemap generation, sitemap upload, and even search engine pinging.

 

Easy, isn't it? And you can even just set a schedule to make all this happen automatically and periodically, which can ensure that search engines will index your updated contents timely.

Now you know how to site map in the easiest way, you can start your sitemap building with SiteMap X right now!

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