Need help creating sitemap

[kannu1]

Hello,

The details of my question is sitemap related. Below is the background info:

we are ecommerce site with around 4000 pages, and 20000 images. we dont have a sitemap implemented on our site yet. i have checked alot of sitemap tools out there, like g-sitecrawler, xml sitemap, a1 sitemap builder etc, and i tried to create sitemaps via them, but all them give different results. the major links are all there, but the results start to vary for  level 2, level 3 links and so on.

plus no matter how much i read up on sitemaps, the more i am getting confused. i read lots of seomoz articles on sitemaps, and due to my limited seo and technical knowledge, the extra information on these articles gets more confusing.

i also just read an article on seomoz that instead of having one sitemap, having multiple smaller sitemaps is very good idea, specially if we are adding lots of new products (which we are).

Now my question:

My question is having understood the immense value of sitemap (and by having it very poorly implemented before), how can i make sure that i get a very good sitemap (both xml and html sitemap). i do not want to do something again and just repeat old mistakes by having a poorly implemented sitemap for our site.

I am hoping that one of the professionals out there, can help me also make and implement the sitemap.

If you can please point me to the right direction.

[KenyonManu3-SEOSEM]

I use http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ as well its well worth the money. you want an accurate site map and you can always edit the text file if you are handy in xml.

[FedeEinhorn]

I've been using xml-sitemaps software for years now, their paid software is great. If you are running PHP based server, you just add the files to one directory and follow the installation steps. It will not only index the entire content, but you can also set limits on how many links per sitemap, they offer addons that automatically creates images/video sitemaps, news, etc. The software also creates an HTML version of the sitemap. And the XML version uses CSS so you can read it with ease.

I would go with them, the software even gives you info on how to submit the sitemaps to Google, sitemap index, etc. Then you can also create a link in the robots.txt so spiders know where to crawl:

Something like:

User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml