Finally! Live.com Provides Webmaster Tools

Live.com has now launched a webmaster blog to keep all of us up to date about how to adjust our sites to rank well with their search engine.

They provide all these easy tools in one place:

• Add your website link
• Add your business to their local search
• and many other tools.

Check it out!

Generating a Search Engine Sitemap for your website

What is this Sitemap business?

A sitemap is a free and easy way for you to tell the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) about your website so that it can be indexed more comprehensively and efficiently.

How Sitemaps Work

A Sitemap is an XML file that you upload to your web server and it acts as a marker for search engines to crawl certain pages. It is an easy way to make your site more search engine friendly. You can list all of your URLs (pages on your site) along with other information (such as the last time the page changed). I will improve how search engines crawl and index your website.

I've found a very easy to use online tool to help you generate a sitemap for your non-profit website. Once you input your site, the XML Sitemaps will generate an xml file which you have to upload to the server where the rest of your web pages are. Then you can go to the links below to tell the different search engines that you have a sitemap in place.

* Google Webmaster Central or sitemaps info.
* Microsoft Live Search submit page or help info (choose the Live Search Site Owner option from the drop-down box. Sorry I can't link to the exact relevant pages. Microsoft has this seemingly impossible to bookmark help system)
* Yahoo Site Explorer or submit information.