Hvassing.com

Google have a lot of useful tools that can make a whole lot of difference if used properly. Google Sitemap is one such tool. By pointing Google to the content of your site chances are that some of the content that their crawlers otherwise wouldn't find is discovered. There are several other benefits from it as well, the lesson to learn is that listening to Google is key.

The sitemap itself
If you're using WordPress creating a sitemap is as easy as writing a blog post, or even easier as creating a sitemap requires no inspiration whatsoever. Download Arne Brachholds «Google Sitemap Generator», there is a version 3 but it's still in beta so you might want to stick with version 2 for now. Put the script in your wp-content/plugins/-directory and activate it through the WordPress administration page. A point to note here is that the script needs write access to your blog directory. When the plugin has been activated a new tab called «Sitemap» will appear on the «Options»-page. The configuration should be self-explanatory, once done just press «Rebuild Sitemap» and a new sitemap should've been created. You should now have something close to http://hvassing.com/sitemap.xml.

The Googely bit
Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ to create an account, of use your current Google-account to log in. During the initial setup of the service you will be requested to give the URI to your newly created sitemap. Conveniently we created that just minutes ago. Chances are that you will also have to verify that it is indeed your sitemap by creating a file on your server with a specific name.

When all this is done, you can have a fresh look at your site -- from Google's perspective that is.

The first page you'll see when clicking your newly added sitemap is the most often returned pages from your site.

What users see is fine and dandy, if things are working that's even better. However, it is when they're not working as intended a webmaster should look out. A look at «Stats» -- « Crawl stats» gives a brief overview of what's working and what's not. As can be seen, most things are working on Hvassing.com, except for some HTTP Errors, not much information to get wiser and act on there. Digging further into what Google has to say one see what is probably the most interesting page. That is; the error statistics that Google has for your site, i.e. what can't be retrieved. This is helpful since, in general, if Google can't retrieve it neither can your users. As can be seen from the image, my links.php can't be retrieved, I deleted the page without removing all the links to it and Google knows that it used to be there. Silly me. This explains the proportion of "HTTP Errors" from the «Stats»-page.

That's pretty much Google Sitemap in a nutshell, however, there are some information and statistics about the different content-types and common words in your site's content. There is also a page devoted to RobotsTxt which is also a good read.

The benefits from adding a sitemap to your site is that Google is made aware of what really exists on your site. This may prove beneficial as the hierarchical structure of your site might turn both complex and difficult to follow as you add content to it. Adding a sitemap will give both the search engines and yourself a better overview of your site, making it easier to put in effort where required.

An example of a sitemap created using Arne Brachholds «Google Sitemap Generator» can be seen at: http://hvassing.com/sitemap.xml there is also a sitemap for those who are not fluent in XML which is located at:
http://hvassing.com/information/sitemap.

Update
Removed some annoying floating from my stylesheet so that the images are now in their right position.