How to Submit an MSN Live Website to Search Engines With XML

Submit an XML sitemap to search engine.

The next step after creating an MSN Live website is to make it easy for visitors to find the site on the web. For this, you need to construct and submit a sitemap to search engines. Sitemaps are web files used to inform search engines about the pages on a web site. Sitemaps can be in text or XML format. XML sitemaps offer more detailed information about a site. There are various XML sitemap generators available on the web that can be used to automatically generate an XML sitemap or you can manually construct one. Once constructed, submitting a sitemap is easy.

Things You'll Need

• Internet access

Instructions

Guidelines for Manually Constructing an XML Sitemap

1. Click "Start," point to "All Programs," go to "Accessories," and select "Notepad" to open Microsoft Notepad.

2. Begin the XML sitemap using the following header:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

   <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

   <url>

3. Place the full URL address of a web page you want search engines to crawl between the "<loc>" and "</loc>" tags.

   For instance:

   <loc>http://www.example.com/tippytoe.html</loc>.

   However, if the URL points to an image file, format as follows:

   <image:image>

   <image:loc> http://www.example.com/tippytoe.jpg </image:loc>

   </image:image>

   If the URL points to a video file, format as follows:

   <video:video>

   <video:content_loc> http://www.example.com/tippytoe.flv</video:content_loc>

   </video:video>

4. Add any additional information about the web page you would like the search spiders to note.

   For example:

   Use the "<lastmod>" and "</lastmod> tags to indicate the date the web page was last modified, as in: <lastmod>2010-10-01</lastmod>.

   Use the "<priority>" and "</priority>" tags to rank the web page's priority, as in: <priority>0.6</priority>.

   Use the "<changefreq>" and "</changefreq>" tags to specify how often the webpage is usually updated (always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or never), as in: <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>.

5. Move onto the next URL in your sitemap and repeat steps 2 and 3.

6. End the XML sitemap using the following footer:

   </url>

   </urlset>

   The following example denotes a simple competed XML sitemap that catalogs one text, one image and one video URL:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

   <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

   <url>

   <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc> (THE TEXT URL)

   <lastmod>2010-10-01</lastmod>

   <changefreq>daily</changefreq>

   <image:image>

   <image:loc> http://www.example.com/tippytoe.jpg </image:loc> (THE IMAGE URL)

   </image:image>

   <video:video>

   <video:content_loc> http://www.example.com/tippytoewalk.flv </video:content_loc> (THE VIDEO URL)

   </video:video>

   </url>

   </urlset>

7. Save the file with an .xml file extension. For example, "sitemap.xml."

8. Access the MSN web host server and upload the sitemap file to the website's root directory.

Use Google Webmaster Tools to Submit XML Sitemap

1. Go to the Google Webmaster Tools sign up/sign in web page (see Resources) and create a Google Webmaster account.

2. Log into your Google webmaster account.

3. Click "Add a site." Type the complete URL address of the website's home page. Click "Continue." Select one of the website ownership verification methods and follow the outline instructions.

4. Log back into your Google Webmaster account. Click on the web site's URL listing.

5. Click "Site Configuration" in the menu options located on the left-side panel. Click "Sitemap." Click "Submit Sitemap." Type the URL address for the sitemap in the designated box. Click "Submit Sitemap."

Ping XML Sitemap to Bing

1. Copy the following URL and paste it in your browser address bar:

   http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=

2. Type the full URL address of your XML sitemap immediately following the "=" sign.

   For example: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?sitemap=www.example.com/sitemap.xml.

3. Press "Enter."

Tips & Warnings

• Rather than using Google webmaster tools to submit your XLM sitemap to Google, you could also ping your sitemap to Google using the same method outlined in section 3 for Bing.

• The Google ping URL is "http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap="

• Rather than ping your XML sitemap to Bing you could also use the Bing Webmaster Tools to submit your sitemap to Bing using a similar method to the one outline in the second section. Use the Bing Webmaster Tools (see Resources) link to get started.

References

• Bing: Submit a Sitemap
• Google: About Sitemaps
• Google: Creating Sitemaps

Resources

• Google: Webmaster Tools
• Bing: Webmaster