AutoMapIt Sitemap Creation Service

AutoMapIt has added a manual tweak page for you to adjust individual pages in your sitemap. This page allows you to adjust the priority level of your pages, how often you change those pages, and whether you want individual pages to be included or not.

The ‘Priority’ of your page is included on your Google sitemap and shows them how your pages relate to the other pages of your site. Google does not use these numbers to compare your site to other websites. Many webmasters try to set all pages to 1.0 in an effort to show Google they are REALLY important and it doesn’t work. My suggestion is to leave your site at a default setting of 0.5 and set your homepage to 1.0 as well as any other MAJOR pages on your site. While being important to your users, pages like ‘contact us’ or ‘Terms of Service’ should be lowered in priority. These are useful pages but they don’t describe your site very well.

The ‘Change Frequency’ lets Google know how often your page is updated. Pages like a blog homepage may be updated as often as ‘daily’ while the individual post pages are basically ‘Never’ updated. Setting your pages change frequencies correctly helps Google to spider your site more efficiently and they seem to appreciate honest answers here.

The final setting we make available is a choice of update time for your page. Many servers do not support finding the last update time remotely. Webmasters with their sites on those servers do not have the option of using the ‘actual’ time for the last-modified date, but we do have the option of using current time or no time at all. If your server supports the last-mod remotely, go ahead and use the real time.

Finally, we allow you to block pages completely. In order to provide the widest support for websites, we allow URLs that end in a “/” and those that don’t. The end result is that most sites end up with a http://www.domain.com and a http://www.domain.com/ in their sitemaps…and don’t forget http://www.domain.com/index.html. Blocking one version of the URL or the other allows you to return to having one version of the page in your sitemaps.

All of these features are on the ‘Tweak Page’ inside your AutoMapIt account and allow for even greater control over your sitemaps.

Tags: Search Engine, google, sitemaps, webmaster

More webmasters are becoming aware of the need for having Google sitemaps to get their site listed quickly and efficiently in Google. While this has caused a recent rash of Google sitemap creation tools, most focus on the Google sitemap alone while ignoring other extremely useful formats. Most webmasters never pursue the power of the Yahoo sitemap, the HTML sitemap, and ‘forget’ to update all of their multiple sitemaps frequently.

HTML sitemaps allow all of the search engines to spider all of your pages, but this is often the most overlooked format. Search engine spiders do their thing by scanning your HTML pages and following the links from those pages. This cycle continues until all pages are scanned… in theory. Imagine all of the pages on the internet, and even with the best hardware, search engines have problems keeping up with every website. They have to do something to shave a few seconds off their day here and there. One way they limit their time on any one site is to only scan so deep into a site.

When Search Engines reach your homepage they follow the first set of links. From these pages they follow the next set of links found and so on until they have spent enough time on one site then continue on to the rest of the web. If they haven’t found all of your pages within the first few passes, they move on until they return at some point. One common strategy for the HTML sitemap is to have every page of your site link to your sitemap and for your sitemap to link to every page of your site. This creates a very spider-friendly atmosphere that allows them to find all of your links quickly. Keeping your HTML sitemap up to date allows every Crawler out there to find your newest pages quickly.

The Yahoo sitemap format has been around a while and is much simpler in format than Google or the HTML format. Yahoo only asks for each URL of your site to be on a new line in a plain old text file on your server. It is easy to use Yahoo’s URL submission page to enter the URL of your Yahoo sitemap and get them to look at your whole site. Once submitted, Yahoo comes to check on your sitemap and begins crawling your site in it’s entirety.

Using the Yahoo, Google, and HTML sitemap formats, you can be assured that your site will have the best exposure possible in the search engines and your traffic will not be limited to what you get from Google alone. There are many search engines out there and all of them offer you traffic. If you are concentrating on Google, you may lose the other engines where your competition is gaining ground.

One of the biggest hassles of growing your website is keeping all of your sitemaps up to date. This is a monumental task to perform by hand and while there are a growing number of Google sitemap generators out there, only one service offers a single solution for all sitemap formats with zero risk of ‘forgetting’ to update your sitemaps regularly. Whichever solution you choose to make this task easier on you as a webmaster or SEO professional, be sure to cover all of your sitemap formats and get the maximum exposure for your website.

Tags: Our sitemaps cover Google, yahoo, HTML and OPML formats for any webmaster to use. This sitemap generator helps your seo efforts as a COMPLETE sitemapping solution.

AutoMapIt.com is a sitemap creation service. What it creates is a Google sitemap, a Yahoo sitemap, an HTML sitemap, and an OPML sitemap. Each has it’s purpose, but the sitemap is usually overlooked or forgotten about entirely by webmasters. If you add new content (pages) to your site regularly or want ad-free HTML sitemaps you will want our upgraded service starting at $10 per month for ad-free, weekly updates. If you don’t mind havingads or you don’t update your site regularly, then AutoMapIt’s free plan may be for you. Whatever your needs are, AutoMapIt is the only service to offer all 4 sitemaps updated automatically with full editorial control over your sitemaps.

Sitemaps list every page on your site and, as the saying goes, every page on your site should link to your HTML sitemap. This creates a naturally search engine friendly navigation throughout your site. The Google sitemap gets
submitted to Google, then Google get pinged (notified) every time we create a new sitemap and upload it to your server. The Yahoo sitemap gets submitted to Yahoo so that they can find every last one of your pages. The HTML sitemap goes on your website and allows every search engine that finds your sitemap to visit all of your pages. If these aren’t kept up to date, then everyone starts getting old information on your site.

The sitemap is only one part of SEO, but it is a critical cornerstone on which all other SEO strategies are based. AutoMapit fully automates the process of updating your sitemaps and it handles all 4 formats. I would strongly suggest you at least sign up for the free service.

Tags: Sitemaps come in several formats. All provide seo benefits for webmasters.

AutoMapIt has finished the first day of being open to the public. There have been quite a few signups and many changes have been made to help make this service easier to use. I’d like to thank everyone who stopped by to check us out today and to all of you who signed up already. You are in on the ground floor of an excellent and growing service.

BJ, from KWDesign has provided this site with an excellent look and feel and I am really pleased with the work you did here. I just wanted to give you a special thank you for all that you have put into this site and our banners. Your code was excellent to work with, you are a true professional.

The AutoMapit spider is built on our own proprietary code and is designed to expand it’s capabilities. Our spider, though simpler, trys to mimic the search engine spiders and concentrates on following HTML anchor links like <a href=”some URL”> yet is still capable of storing your feeds in your sitemap. It does not follow javascript: links. By setting up your filters that we provide, you are able to eliminate spidering loops and huge, spammy sitemaps that plague many sites.

The ‘tweak’ page will be the next to be added which will allow you to setup individual parameters for specific pages of your site in the Google Sitemap. This will allow you to set a higher priority for your homepage and any main supporting pages than the rest of your site. This priority doesn’t affect how Google ranks you, but it helps them to understand which of your pages are the most meaningful and important to your site. You will also be able to adjust the individual ‘Change Frequency’ for your pages. Some Stores use homepages that change products every time the page loads. The change frequency on a page like that should be ‘Always’, while the individual product pages may only change weekly or monthly, if ever. An archived Blog entry may ‘Never’ change, but the homepage of the blog may change ‘Weekly’ or ‘Daily’. These settings aren’t for everybody, but if you’re the kind of person who hits all of the buttons before you realize there’s a manual… this page is certainly for you!

We will continue to improve this service and always listen to your ideas and suggestions. If you ever have any questions or comments, please contact support.