How To Create Your Own XML Site Map?

Work on algorithm in the vintage computer lab

How To Create Your Own XML Site Map?

 

The alternative is to write your own XML site map. The site-map protocol extends requirements for writing a site map that’s fully functional. The top two requirements of that protocol are that your site map must consist of XML tags and that is should be UTF-8 encoded. UTF-8 encoding stands for 8 bit UCS/Unicode Transformation Format and is a type of code that’s consistent with ASCII.

 

 

Another requirement for your XML site map is that data values within the site map must be entity escaped, which means that special characters indicating alternative interpretations must be used. Entity escape codes you can use in your XML site map include those listed in Table 16-1.

 

 

These escape characters are used in URLs to replace the characters indicated. So the following URL

          http://www.example.com/product.html&q=name

would look like this after the escape codes are included:

          http://www.example.com/product.html&q=name

 

In addition to entity escaping, you must also use a set of XML tags. The ones you’ll use most fre- quently are shown in Table 16-2.

 

NOTE

 

The code snippets used in this chapter are examples of how site maps should be written specifically for Google. For the most part, these snippets will be the same across the various search engines, but before you begin writing your site map code, review the guidelines set forth by the search engine you’re targeting. Luckily Google, Yahoo!, and MSN have all agreed to follow the same site-map standard.

This allows you to separate and differentiate the links within a category, giving a different weight to each, according to its function on your site.

 

 

There is one limitation to site maps of which you should be aware. Site maps are limited to no more than 50,000 URLs and 10 MB per map. And if you’re using multiple maps listed in a site-map index, there can be no more than 1,000 site maps. This is a pretty large allowance, so you may not ever have to worry about the limits, but you should still know what they are.

 

 

How to create your own XML site map
How to create your own XML site maps
Create your own XML site map

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