Placing a sitemap.xml file in the root folder is important for website promotion. When your website is indexed by Search Engines all URL's listed in the sitemap will be indexed and followed. The information provided in sitemap.xml can tell the search engine what pages to crawl, the frequency the webpage is updated and how important the page is. A sitemap does not guarantee your site will be indexed and high search engine ranking gained. It is an instruction to assist search engines which may lead to better results as part of a search engine friendly website.

Example of a Google sitemap.xml format;

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

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

<url>

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

<lastmod>2008-04-20</lastmod>

<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

</urlset>

Repeat <url> to </url> section for additional URL's to be included in your sitemap.xml

Location and change frequency are the only required elements of the URL. Change frequency and priority are optional. It is probably a good idea to just use location and frequency as not to offend search engines by providing incorrect information in your sitemap.xml

A sitemap.xml file should contain no more than 50,000 URL's. If this is exceeded you will need to create a sitemap index file which can contain up to 1000 sitemap.xml locations.

Example of a Google sitemap_index.xml

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

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

<sitemap>

<loc>http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap1.xml.gz</loc>

<lastmod>2004-10-01T18:23:17+00:00</lastmod>

</sitemap>

<sitemap>

<loc>http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap2.xml.gz</loc>

<lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>

</sitemap>

</sitemapindex>

With a sitemap_index.xml location is required but last modified is optional.