In this video tutorial, I am going to show you how to use Sitemap Automator to help get your site listed in Google. Recently, Google has made a change to how you need to verify your site through its Webmaster Tools. Because of this change, Sitemap Automator has been updated and now makes it easier for people, especially iWeb users, to get their sites indexed by Google.

Just a quick note before I begin, for those of you who are using domain forwarding, you should make sure that your domain is not masked. You can email your host to find out if it is masked. A masked domain will always prevent your site from being fully indexed by search engines.

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. To do this, we have two options. We can upload it to our FTP, or we can upload it to our iDisk if we are an iWeb user using MobileMe.

If you are publishing to iDisk, you have two options for publishing. The first option is to publish to your root folder. The second option is to publish to a selected folder. This second option is for users who have more than one site on their MobileMe server.

If you are publishing to a selected folder, it is important to remember the name of this folder as you will need to use it later. I am going to remember the folder Photos_By_Matt. Pay attention to how I use it later on in the video.

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

To add a site, click on the Add a site button. Then type in your website URL. Here is where I will type in the Photos_By_Matt folder name. Remember, this is for iWeb users who do not publish to their root folder. Again, you only publish to your root folder if you have only one site on your MobileMe server.

After you’ve typed in your URL and clicked on the continue button, the next page will show us the verification method. 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, back in 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 by either publishing to FTP or publishing to iDisk. Again, if you do publish to a selected folder, make sure that you select that folder when publishing the verification file.

Your next step is to head back to Google Webmaster Tools and click the verify button. Once verified, you must not 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.

And that is how you get your site listed in all major search engines. To see more Mac Software video tutorials, visit www.apptorial.com