Google Sitemaps

Note that if you have Freeway 5.5 or later, we strongly recommend that you use the Sitemapper Action which ships with those versions of Freeway. You can see how to set up the Sitemapper Action in the article at http://www.softpress.com/kb/questions/397/.

A Google Sitemap is similar to regular site maps, but is a machine readable file (XML) that Google uses to see which of your pages are more important than others and how often they are updated. Google then uses this information to decide how frequently your pages should be indexed. Creating this kind of Site Map can be done with the Site Mapper action if you have Freeway 5.5, or manually if you are using an older version of Freeway.

Using the Site Mapper Action

The Site Mapper action, introduced in Freeway 5.5, can be set to create and upload the xml file with the rest of your site files and particular pages can have their details submitted at set frequencies or with a specific priority. You can also choose which search engines you wish to submit the Sitemap file to.

There are a few steps involved in setting it up, but once the action is configured, everything else happens automatically.

  1. Enter the web address to where the site will be available once it’s uploaded in the Upload settings. Go to File > Document Setup, click the Upload tab, enter the URL in the Web Address field and click OK.
  2. Select your Site Folder in the Site Panel, which is the folder at the top of the list of site pages, immediately underneath the line below the Master page(s). Apply the Site Mapper action to the Site Folder by choosing Page > Folder Actions > Site Mapper while the Site Folder is selected.
  3. Select the page you want to use as the main sitemap page (this is usually your home page), and apply the file location action by selecting Page > Page Actions > Site Mapper File Location with your main page still selected.
You can now select your Site Folder again, and use the Actions Panel (Window > Actions) to select what search engines you want to submit your Site Map to. Once you have uploaded your completed website, check the “Yes, the site has been uploaded to the web server” option, and click Submit site map to submit it to the search engines.

Applying the Site Mapper Action to your Site Folder will generate a Sitemap file for your entire site which has the same settings for every page. You can, however, use different settings for specific pages of your site by applying the Site Mapper Page Action to those pages.

To do this, go to your page then go to Page > Page Actions > Site Mapper. The Actions palette for the Site Mapper Page Action is a cut-down version of the Folder Action you applied to the Site Folder. Any frequency and/or priority settings made in the Site Mapper Page Action will over-ride those settings made in Action applied which has the Site Mapper Action applied.

Manually Creating a Google Sitemap

You can write your own Google Sitemaps, the XML is fairly straight forward, but why bother when you can use a tool like this to generate one for you:

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

Once your Google Sitemap has been generated, you will need to upload it to the root directory of your site. You can do this with a dedicated FTP client such as Cyberduck, Fetch, or Transmit. Alternatively, you can use the Upload Extra Resources action. Apply the action to an item which is on your main index page (this can be done with any item on that page), and specify that the Sitemap should be uploaded “With Page’s HTML File”.



We recommend signing up to the Google Webmaster service http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools.
This service not only allows you to submit Google Sitemaps, it also provides
information about your Google search ranking, what position your site appears
in the search engine results page (SERP) for sepcific search terms and also the keywords that Google sees on your pages. All of these things
will help you make your site even more findable.