How to create a Sitemap?

I've spent a significant amount of time this year focusing on learning and understanding how to improve my SEO ranking. I'm an idiot when it comes to technology so believe me, the majority of what I've read hasn't clicked yet. I'm hoping for it to make sense eventually, but so far I'm very confused. Implementing the few things I have understood has taken me from non-existent to the first page, but I need the last little boost to the top. I believe a sitemap could do the trick. I made my website through webstarts with a template and can't figure out how to create the sitemap. Any suggestions?

I don't think a site map is all that important anymore.... but I could be completely wrong (it has happened... once I think, but it could happen again ).

I don't have one and I come up high on searches for my area... most of the first three pages are me or links to me. I used templates to create mine and a sitemap wasn't something that came up.

I think it is more that I keep my site current, edit/update regularly, and have been a live page for seven years and have lots of links to and from my site.

Thanks Shannon. I feel like I'm reaching for straws because I am just baffled that I'm not at the top. To me, my content is much better than the sites ranking above me and I update far more frequently so I just don't understand why I'm falling short. The site that ranks first has almost no content at all. It goes against everything I've read on rankings, yet there it stands. First on most searches. It's never been updated that I can tell and the other ones is like 10 years old and I think it was last updated 10 years ago. I have put a ton of effort into this and so many others I speak to that have good rankings honestly say they have no idea why they are ranked highly and they put no effort into what so ever. It's seriously starting to feel like luck of the draw. I'm sure I'm missing something and I would absolutely adore the person that pointed it out.

Have you compared their meta tags to yours? I know some say that they don't count as much anymore but ... worth having a look.

I have, but haven't found any major differences.

Maybe it is a combination of age of the site and the links?

Time is a great equalizer I've been told.

Site maps do still matter. Whitney- your key words and meta content links in your code are kind of a mess... I am not sure either is being read, and they are kind of formatted weird. meta content="face painting el paso, facepainting, face-painting,fine art el paso,body,entertainer el paso, body painter el paso,bodypainter el paso,birthday party entertainer el paso,party" name="keywords" meta content="Face painting and body painting for birthday parties and fine art. It is the perfect entertainment for any event. Contact us for an entertainer in el paso, tx or jacksonville, fl." name="description"

Also, the key word list you do in your posts (All those key words at the bottom under your banner) COULD be hurting you, some of the search engines look for that, and will limit the visibility of the sites doing it.

Now that I poke around a bit more I think that MIGHT be what is doing it... I looked at the two sites that come up before you if I type El paso face painter, and their sites are worse than yours with regards to content for SEO.

I think you need to ditch the key word stuffing in the post signature, redo your meta content and key words on your site, get rid of anything else clever you may have done to nudge the engines, get rid of the unrelated links on your site (Like Angry birds- twice) move the pay pal link off the home page, make sure your text uses the key words you want to optimize for as often as possible in real English sentances, and then wait a month or two for those changes to perculate.

Thanks for that info!

if you do a google search for "sitemap" you will find several sitemap generators... then I think you just upload the file created to where your html is stored? I had one on my old site but I never remembered to update the map when I updated my website, so it probably wasn't accurate anyway. I haven't done anything like that now that I've moved my site to squarespace... I think that kind of thing is probably automatically generated with all the amazing stuff on there.

**Edited to add this information that I found in the squarespace specific help files... some of it might be interesting to note for other people too:

An XML Sitemap, in simple terms, is a list of pages on your website. It can be useful for telling Google and other search engines about pages on your site they may not otherwise discover. For most websites, however—especially those on Squarespace—an XML Sitemap is unnecessary. Squarespace employs a clear site architecture and clean URLs, so search engines should have no problem crawling and indexing your content.

While we don't feel it's necessary, if you do wish to create an XML Sitemap, you can find more information at

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=183668.

When you are ready to add this to your site, you can upload the file to your site from your Site Manager > Data & Media > General File Storage, using this guide.

Thanks so much for the input Leaping Lizards. So what exactly is wrong with my meta tags? I'm so confused as to how optimize them so please help in that area.

Also, the angry birds links came with the Flickr, and Twitter links. If I remove them will it hurt me?

Ok, I've removed the keywords below and have removed the links on my webpage. Now I just need the sitemap and keywords help. My issue with the sitemap is that all of those generators need you to upload a file to create the sitemap. How do I upload a file if my website was generated with a template. Then, what is wrong with my keywords, so I can fix them?

A site map is just a list of all the pages on your site. it can either ba at the bottom of the template so it appears on every page, or on it's own page but then there HAS to be a link from the home page. A Site map allows the spiders to index easily from one click away from the home page.

I'll try to do the key words later when I have a second. Right now is hard time for me

Ok, so I think I've done the sitemap. If someone who knows how to check for it would please let me know if I've applied it correctly, that would be great. I uploaded the sitemap to every page so I'm not sure if that's correct or not?

And now I'm on to figuring out more about those darn keywords and meta tags.

Thanks Leaping Lizards! You have no idea how much I appreciate your help. This issue has been driving me nuts and I am so happy to feel like I'm getting close to having some results.

You guys are great. I'm now up to the #4 slot! Just 3 more to go until I'm at the top. Still playing and tweaking. I'll let you know if I ever get there.