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Happy Webit,

Web-it Lesson #18

Here’s the latest on Google Sitemap Compliance.  

The Really Simple Sitemap we created in Lesson 13 is super simple, easy to navigate and can be crawled by the search engines but it isn’t fully Google compliant.  I found this out while writing my last post and verifying my new sitemap with Google. 

In order for your site to be Google compliant it needs to be in the XML format.  The problem is that most of the plug-ins that meet the requirements these days are really ugly.

So what you want to do is keep your Really Simple Sitemap that you just installed a couple of lessons back and install a second more ugly sitemap that the public doesn’t see.  

• The Really Simple Sitemap is not only great looking but also functional and helps your site visitors get around with ease.
• The ugly XML sitemap is totally compliant and only the search engines see it.  See my ugly Google XML Sitemap

To get a Google Compliant Sitemap for yourself simply click on Add New Plug-Ins in your Wordpress Admin and  search for the word “sitemap”. Choose the Google XML Sitemap and activate it.  

Once activated you need to submit the new Sitemap URL to Google Webmaster Tools.

Note: Your new Google compliant sitemap url should look something like this once it’s created - http://yourblog.com/sitemap.xml