In a previous article (Improve Your Search Odds with Google Sitemaps), I described the basics of Google Sitemaps - a relatively new Google feature that promises to greatly increase the odds of getting Google to crawl your website.

Yahoo has now emulated Google Sitemaps with its own easy to use sitemap version. While Google Sitemaps must be produced and submitted in XML format, Yahoo Sitemaps only require a simple text file (.txt) containing a list of your website's URLs.

Just as with Google, before the advent of Yahoo Sitemaps, site owners could only submit their homepage to Yahoo. Now Yahoo will be able to more easily crawl your entire website and thus, in theory at least, increase the odds of your site being listed.

Creating and Submitting your Sitemaps File to Yahoo
1: Create a text file (e.g. sitemap.txt) containing a list of your URLs, with one URL per line. Using the example of my last three articles to appear on AlaskaInternetToday.com, this text file would contain the following three URLs:

http://www.alaskainternettoday.com/experts/connor_spyware.html
http://www.alaskainternettoday.com/experts/connor_google_sitemaps.html
http://www.alaskainternettoday.com/experts/connor_website_statistics.html

2. Once created, upload this file to your website’s root directory (the same directory as the homepage).

3: Log into Yahoo's Free Submit page (http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request) with your Yahoo ID and Password. If you don't have a Yahoo account, or don't use Yahoo Mail, you will need to create an account by clicking on the "Sign Up" link.

4: Submit the URL of your Yahoo Sitemap, e.g., http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.txt, by entering it into the "Enter your URL" box.

A Win-Win Deal
The idea of Yahoo Sitemaps is a truly a win-win deal. By telling Yahoo of the pages that exist on your website, Yahoo saves computing resources (time and money) while you increase the odds of Yahoo crawling your site and listing your pages.

With approximately one in four (24%) Internet searches now completed using Yahoo, Yahoo Sitemaps is an important new tool that shouldn’t be ignored. 

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