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A Google Sitemap is just an xml file that looks like this
Demo Map with a list of all the pages in your web site. You create it
(easy), put it in your site and then tell Google where to find it (submit it).
Your sitemap must contain, at minimum,
the URLs (http://www.yoursite.com) of all the pages you want Google to know about, and
include in their search results (right at the top :) You can also add, for each page,
the LastModified Date, Change Frequency, and Priority. (Google likes fresh,
often changed pages) So you can let Google know which pages change often, and
which pages you think are more important than others. Check Googles FAQ Page and Google Groups Sitemaps
Go to the 'Create New Map' page, enter the URL of your site and
click Create Map. Sit back and wait while the generator goes to your site and
collects all the links to all the sites pages it can find. This can take
a while. If the generator cant find your site, gets redirected or just lost, it
will report what happened. The page should refresh, with all the pages form your site listed,
ready for editing.
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Look through the URLs of the pages. To exclude any pages from the sitemap, uncheck
the box for the link. You may want to exclude links to Login, Register or Disclaimer
pages etc. To find pages, type a fragment of a URL in the edit box and click 'Find'
to highlight any matches (ie: 'Disclaimer'). You can then check or uncheck all
these entries by clicking Check or UnCheck. In the same way, enter some text
into the Change Frequency or Priority boxes, set the desired Change Frequency
or Priority from the control panel dropdowns, click 'Go' and all entries
containing this text will be changed to the selected setting. You can also use the
up and down arrows to increment or decrement all the settings. Be patient, this
can take a while for large sites. Click the help icons  in each panel for
explanations and details. Go here, click 'Demo Map', then 'Get Map' to load the 'Demo Map'. After it loads, click 'Edit Demo' for a walk through on how to edit sitemaps
When you have the edits all set correctly, click Google Sitemap and wait while the
generator builds your sitemap. The page will refresh with the actual xml displayed where the editor
was. You can toggle between Edit and XML Map view. Click anywhere in the text
of the map view to highlight, then right click and choose Copy. Open Notepad,
right click in the page, and choose paste to paste in the xml. Now Save the
file as 'sitemap.xml' and upload it to the root of your site.
(http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml)
Log into your Google Sitemaps account link click 'Add' and enter the URL of your sitemap.
(eg: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml) Next you need to verify your website, so
Google knows it's yours. Click the 'Verify' link at the right of the page and follow the
instructions (easy). All you do is create an empty html file with a special verification file name Google gives you
(Open Notepad, choose 'Save As' enter the verification file name and click "Save')
Next, upload the verification file to the same folder as your sitemap.xml file. Then, when you click the 'Verify' button
Google attempts to fetch the file, to see if you have access to the web site (if not, you couldn't upload the verification file)
If all goes well, after a while (hours?)
Google will go and download your sitemap, and display the status (hopefully OK)
on your Google Sitemaps account page.
Being nice to your Mum and behaving yourself will
probably be of more benefit here than anything else you can do.
Google has OK'd your sitemap, but nothing much has
happened. So you've updated all your most important pages, and decided that
your original Priority settings probably aren't prioritised the way they should
be. Do it all again? NO WAY! Just go the the 'Edit Existing Map' link on
this site, enter the URL of your existing sitemap
(http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml) and it will turn up in the editor again,
ready to to be edited, saved, uploaded to your site and re-submitted to Google
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