I was rebuilding site maps today, updating them and ensuring they are all (this can be labor intensive with 50+ websites) in the current XML industry standard format so all search engine spiders can index your website and do it effectively. You can find additional information about site maps and the latest industry protocol sitemaps.org

You need to make sure that when creating your sitemaps that they are in .xml format; this is the preferred method of acceptance across all search engines. Be sure to submit your sitemaps to the big three, Google, MSN (aka Live.com) and Yahoo. Submitting your sitemap to the big three search engine is one of the first steps in getting your websites search engine optimization ramped up.  Adding a sitemap to the search engines is the telling the search engine spiders everything there is to know about your website, its structure and what pages are available for indexing.

It can be a little annoying setting up three accounts across all three search engines, but it will pay big dividends. You can use the features available in each search engines webmaster tools for various SEO projects, and you should visit these sites relatively often. I will get into the various versions of webmaster tools at a later date.

Stop doing whatever it is your doing, and make sure you have current xml sitemaps submitted to the big three search engines.