Generating Your Magento XML Sitemap

This post will form a part of a triangle of posts that I have written in order to explain the processes by which you can provide Google with an up to date dynamic sitemap that is optimised for your magento website.

This post will be about generating your Google Sitemap from the Magento admin section, Making sure that the XML file is in place on the root of your server, and double checking the contents of that sitemap.

The other two posts in this series which you should read are:

1. Setting up a Cron Job in Plesk
2. Index Your Magento Pages

Once you have read those two posts and this one – you should have a good understanding and grasp of how beneficial automatic xml sitemap generation is for a Magento website.

Creating your XML Sitemap

To create your XML sitemap then, first of all go to catalog>google sitemap. Click on Add Sitemap at the top. You should see something like the following:

You should enter sitemap.xml as your filename and also / as the path for the file to be generated. This will write the file to the root of your magento website. Click save & generate.

If you recieve an error what I suggest is checking that no existing sitemap.xml is currently present. When you generate your sitemap you can now schedule its automatic creation. To do this go to system>configuation>google sitemap.

Set the options for priority as per the Index Your Magento Pages post and for the generation settings set it up so that Obviously set the time however you want it – NOTE that the sitemap will probably not be generated at exactly 9:10am. It will be generated the next time a Cron Job is ran after that time has elapsed.

To set up your cron job using pleask please see my previous post Setting up a Cron Job in Plesk.

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