Xml Sitemaps for Massage Therapists

Adding an xml sitemap to your website and updating it regularly is one way to get the search engines indexing (and listing) your website.  Don’t worry if you don’t know what one is – you don’t need to know really.   Just know you need one!

An xml sitemap is a special file that creates a list of your whole website and tells google about each page.   Here is the xml sitemap for this site – www.massagepracticebuilder.com If you take a look at it you won’t know what it is all about – heck I don’t even get it really.  I do know that you really need to have one on your site and everytime you change or update a page on your website the xml sitemap needs to be updated.

The easiest way to get a sitemap on your website is to use a WordPress Blog like this and use the xml site plugin or use Site Build it! Both of these services create and update the xml sitemap for you automatically.  You still have to submit it the first time.

If you don’t use one of these services you will have to find out if your service will automatically create one for you.  If they don’t you can have one created for free online at www.auditmypc.com It is a little tricky to get the flash creator loaded.  You have to click on the little button that says “Sitemap generator click to begin”.  It isn’t really obvious.  Some software will load in your browser.  The first time I just loaded it I got an error message and just refreshed my browser.   Just put your website url into the place where it says URL.   Just put in your address and click the green arrow at the bottom.  It will run for a few minutes.  Then click on the sitemap button at the top and you will be able to export it as an xml file. ( and a few other file types.) You will export it as an xml file and then save it to your computer.  You then have to put it up on your website with whatever system you are using.  (You’ll have to figure out how to get it up there.)

You should update the file every few weeks ago until you are getting the results you want.

The xml sitemap is also what is submitted to Google to get your website found.  Here are the steps for submitting your site to Google.

1. You will need to have a gmail account.
2. login to Google webmasters tools (if this link isn’t working just do a search for Google webmasters tools.  You login with your gmail login
3. There will be a button there for add your site.  Just put your site url in the box.
4. Once you have submitted it you can then add your xml sitemap.  Your site should show up on  a list there.  Click on your listing and then in the left side bar find the site configuration section and then the sitemap section.  Add the last part of the name of your xml file.

After you submit it go back the next day or later and see if there is a green check mark or a red x.  If you get the red x something is not right so try it again. If you see a green check mark you will then be able to see the details if Google has indexed your site or not.

Then submit it to yahoo through this link to Yahoo! Explorer.  Go to the section on the top left that says submit your site.  Two options show up.  Start with just adding your url and then do the next one and submit your sitemap.  They only want the file name – not the whole url.   So mine would be sitemap.xml

For Bing all you need to do is manually send them the info.

1. Copy this string of code and place it in your brower.  Don’t click enter yet. http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=
   
2. Then copy the full sitemap URL from your website, beginning with ” http://www.yourwebsite.com/yoursitemapfile.xml “
3. Add that to the first strip of code you placed in your browser.
4. So mine would look like this:
   http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://www.massagepracticebuilder.com/sitemap.xml
5. Make sure the code is all together with no spaces in between the two pieces.  You can also just put them together in something like notepad first.  Click Enter!  You should get a message that says Your sitemap has been entered or something like that!

To submit your sitemap to Ask Follow these directions:

1. Copy and paste this piece of code into your browser window.
   http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//
2. The copy your sitemap address starting at the www.   part.  Don’t include the http:// part.  Add your file name to the piece of code in step one that you placed in your browser.
3. Click Enter!  You should receive a message that tells you that it was successful!  If not, there is usually some extraneous dot or dash or space in your code!  It has to be exact.

So now you have all of the xml sitemaps submitted to Google.  It still does not guarantee that your site will be found or indexed but it gives you the best shot.  That and the combination of using the best keywords as well as having about 30 pages of content on your website or more is the winning combination.

Related posts:

1. Websites for Massage Therapists