SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible

Creating 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 Formatand 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.

TABLE 16-1

Entity Escape Characters

Character Escape Code

Ampersand & &

Single Quote ‘ '

Double Quote “ "

Greater Than > >

Less Than < <

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.

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.

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Part III Optimizing Search Strategies

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