Google Sitemaps for Movable Type

Google Sitemap is a simple XML file that describes the contents of your site along with straightforward instructions for how the site should be spidered by the search engine.

Making a Google Sitemap is critical to keeping your website up to date in the SERP's with Google. I use Google Sitemap Generator for my Wordpress blog, supriyadisw dot net. Unfortunately, I could not found Movable Type plugin to create Google sitemap for my Movable Type. :(

Luckily creating a sitemap and even keeping tabs on how often Googlebot visits your website, could not be easier with Movable Type.

Create Google Sitemap

• Create a new template called sitemap.xml or something similar and add the contents of this sitemap file to the template.
• Link the template to a file name like sitemap.xml as well.
• Click save and rebuild your site.
• Now every time you rebuild your site a new sitemap.xml file will be built for Google to spider.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://your_url/sitemap.xml

Verify Google Sitemap

• You can to login into your Google Sitemap account or you can create a new account if you did not have it yet.
• Submit your site url, eg. http://www.supriyadisw.com.
• You need verify your site. You can choose verification method by add a meta tag or upload an HTML file.
• After your site got verified, you need to submit your sitemap. You can do it by submit the URL to the XML file you just generated. Be sure to check it first to make sure it looks OK.

Reference

• Niall Kennedy's Movable template for generating a sitemap.
• Google Sitemaps in Movable Type by Sixapar.

Have a great day and gud lak!