Google Sitemaps using Movable Type

It’s pretty easy to make an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) Sitemap of your blog for easy parsing by Google or other search engines.

Just create a new index template and copy the code below. Choose an output file that is easy to remember such as sitemap.xml. Save and rebuild your new template file once you paste the code.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">

<url>

  <loc><$MTBlogURL encode_xml="1"$></loc>

  <priority>1.0</priority>

</url>

<MTEntries lastn="9999">

<url>

  <loc><$MTEntryPermalink encode_xml="1"$></loc>

  <lastmod><$MTEntryModifiedDate utc="1" format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ"$></lastmod>

</url>

</MTEntries>

</urlset>

Now you need to let Google know where to find your sitemap. Open up your web browser and enter http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap= + the Uniform Resource Locator (URL)-encoded location of your sitemap.

That’s it! You can use your Google account to keep track of your pings or multiple sites.