How To Get Your RapidWeaver Website Listed in Google

February 1st, 2011

Getting Google and other search engines to find all of the pages on your website can sometimes be difficult. In order to get these search engines to be aware of your website, it is a good idea to create an XML Sitemap and submit it to these search engines. The following video tutorial will teach you why we do this, and how it can be done easily with Sitemap Automator. Remember to check out the SEO For RapidWeaver Video Tutorial to learn how to make your RapidWeaver website more visible to search engines.

Video Transcript

In order to get your RapidWeaver website listed in search engines, I am going to show you how to create an XML Sitemap, and submit it to the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask. We will also take it one step further by verifying our website with Google Webmaster Tools. The verification process is necessary so we can let Google know that we are the website owner and any confidential information is going to the right person or people.

First off, what is an XML Sitemap? An XML Sitemap is basically a blueprint of your website, made specifically for search engines. The Sitemap will contain the links to all visible pages on your website, so that search engines can be made aware of these links, and then index them in their search results.

To some, this process might sound somewhat complicated, but is simplified when we use a third-party tool. For this demonstration, I will be using our tool called Sitemap Automator. Sitemap Automator is available for download at www.ragesw.com
So to create your sitemap, first click on the New Sitemap button, and then type in your website URL. Next, you’ll need to click on the Create Sitemap button. Depending on how big your website is, this scanning process can take up to a few minutes. I will fast forward through this process.

When your site has been fully scanned, you can now click the Generate Sitemap button to proceed to the next step. The next thing we have to do, is upload our sitemap. Select Publish to FTP and press the Publish button. Fill in your server URL, followed by your username and password. For the Root Directory field, many of you can leave this blank, but for those who do not publish to the root directory, or have multiple websites on your hosting account, you will most likely need to type something in. For example, those who use RAGE Web Hosting, you will need to type in public_html. You can also choose to browse your server to locate the right folder to publish to. When you are done filling out all the fields, press the upload button.

After the sitemap has been published, we must then go to our Google Webmaster Tools account so that we can manually submit our sitemap. If you do not have an account, you can create a free one by going to http://www.google.com/webmastertools.

Once you are logged in, you will need to add your site by typing in the URL and pressing the continue button.

After you’ve typed in your URL and clicked continue , the next page will show us the verification method. As mentioned earlier, Google requires us to verify that we are the owners of the site so that we can be safely provided with information regarding our websites.

The first thing you want to do, is select Upload an HTML file as your verification method. Then click on the download link to download the verification file. You must know where this file is being saved in order to use it in our next step.

After you have downloaded the file, go back to Sitemap Automator, click on file in the menubar and select Publish Verification File. Then click on the Select Verification File and find the file that you just downloaded. The next step is to publish the file.

Your next step is to head back to Google Webmaster Tools and click the verify button. Once verified, you must now tell Google Webmaster Tools where it can find your sitemap. Click on your site URL, then click the plus sign next to Site Configuration. and then click on Sitemaps. Next, click the Submit a Sitemap button, and in the text box, type in sitemap.xml as you see here. Then click Submit Sitemap.

Finally, our last step, back in Sitemap Automator, click on the notify search engines button, and your sitemap will be submitted Google, Yahoo, Ask, and Bing.


3 Responses to “How To Get Your RapidWeaver Website Listed in Google”

  1. Jody Says:

    Hi, while watching this video, it turns blank at about 4 mins 45 sec. I get audio, but no video.

  2. Jody Says:

    Sorry, it appears at about 4 mins. 5 secs. Turns white -audio but no video.

  3. jeremy Says:

    Thanks for letting us know. The problem has been fixed.

Leave a Reply