Sitemap and Other Related Concepts

[cosmic_sniper]

I was trying to index my website on Google and I came across "sitemap". To be honest, I've heard of the term before but don't really understand it. After conducting a few research I had better understanding of it and decided to create Sitemaps for my sites.

 

The problem is I only know HTML (pretty good understanding) and PHP (on the process of studying). If I got it right, sitemap in accordance to sitemap protocol is created using XML. I came across one option, which is using third-party software. Do you think it's a good option? If so, then do you have any suggested software? Or should I really learn to create a sitemap manually?

 

A little off-topic question: how long does it usually take for google to crawl into the site for it to see the keywords, etc.

 

Thanks in advance!

[scootstah]

XML is just a markup language, like HTML. There isn't a whole lot to know, it is just data formatted in a specific way.

 

Unless you have a completely static site I would use some sort of sitemap creator, be it your own creation or a third party script - just so that everything is automated and you never forget to update it.

 

PHP works nicely with XML so it should be a fairly easy thing to do.

[cosmic_sniper]

Thanks for the advice.

 

I tried this online sitemap generator wherein you just need to give the website and they would give you a download link for an xml file which you would upload into the root directory of your site. In that case, is it safe to say that the file is only good for the sitemap applicable during the time the xml file was generated and I have to generate another sitemap whenever I change factors concerning the link?

[scootstah]

Yes.

 

Also note that off-site solutions can really only guess what needs to be in the sitemap, and you (probably) have little control over it. It would be better to have a script that can actually interact with your database and such.