Chris Anders - Internet Strategy Consultant

Google Sitemaps are "XML" files that contain a list of all the web pages on your site, provide an indication of how often they are updated and the importance of each. Once created you upload them to your website - in what's called the "root directory". By root directory it means that the sitemap is available from e.g. www.yoursite.org/sitemap.xml and NOT from www.yoursite.org/foldername/sitemap.xml

If you don't already use Google Webmaster sign up for it, add and verify your site and register the sitemap with Google. This will ensure that as many pages as possible get indexed.

For smaller sites under 500 pages you can ignore all of the techie stuff and go to a site such as xml-sitemaps.com - ( http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ ) and enter your web address and they automatically scan your site and generate a sitemap for you.

For larger sites sites such as xml-sitemaps will generate a sitemap for you for a fee. Remember you need to update your sitemap from time to time as your site changes - for example as you add or remove pages (it doesn't matter if you just update content within pages). To update your sitemap simply generate another and upload it to your site to replace the old one. You don't need to tell Google Webmaster about this.

For larger or more dynamic sites and particularly larger sites that are run by content management systems you should ideally either choose software or look at developing an add-on that will update your sitemap automatically. Otherwise Google will continue to use the old sitemap until you replace it. Technical details on the format of Google sitemaps will be covered in another post.