[mammu]

Do you have any simple tutorial on how to use Google Webmaster Tools and submit our site to search engines.

[Code Monkey]

That's kind of a vague question. What is it specifically you want to know?

[Zaiaku]

The site should be pretty self explanatory. Just need to login and add your site. After you submit your site you will have to validate it either by adding a META code or uploading a html file. Once its authenticated (took 3 mins for me) you can easily take a look at all the tools and see how your site is doing and where some problems it found.

[Code Monkey]

Uploading a file is best as you won't have to worry about losing the META tag when you update vBulletin or a template.

[mammu]

I am having lots of queries.

1. What should be the contents of robots.txt file?
I have kept
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Also it shows error 404 when I add a sitemap on google webmaster tools.

2. I made sitemap.xml from Create your Google Sitemap Online - XML Sitemaps and also tried to add a sitemap with this file but same error 404!

3. Important thing is after verifying my site it shows 1 error in webcrawl
http://www.mydomain.com/function.require 404 (Not found)
Couldn't get what is this?

(I uploaded my sitemap.xml, robots.txt to my root dir.)

[Zaiaku]

http://www.mydomain.com/function.require 404 (Not found)

That sounds like you have one hell of a typo in a mod or some page on your site. You may want to examine anthing you customized. Especially if you can find out the refering page to that link. If you can't find a referal in your pages, trying looking int he stats of your cpanel.

[mammu]

i searched a lot and found when I put my site without www it don't show that error!
Just put http://mydomain.com/ and it works without error.

But I still get errors while adding a sitemap.xml and urllist.txt
This is what I get.

General HTTP error: 404 not found
We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit. [?]

But it accepts my ror.xml file(RSS feedback) from the same root location where I kept sitemap.xml and urllist.txt!

[Zaiaku]

How did you create your sitemap?
Check your .htaccess file.
Also could try disabling some mods and rebuild your sitemap.

Without looking at your site and going through stuff I can't tell you forsure what the problem is. And besides its only 1 404 error, its not going to kill your site raitings.

[Code Monkey]

You should use the free vBSEO sitemap generator.

[mammu]

I think I can't link my website over here, if I am not wrong!

I will look into solutions you provided and try my hand on it.
Lets see how it works. Otherwise there is always vBSEO Demo waiting in line.

I will popup to tell you if I get something new thing to share with you.

[da420]

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

Uploading a file is best as you won't have to worry about losing the META tag when you update vBulletin or a template.

That's what I do.

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

You should use the free vBSEO sitemap generator.

This works great, and makes it super simple, even for a dummy like me.

[mammu]

What to do if we get this error Webmaster Help Center - We couldn't find the Sitemap at the location you provided. Please make sure the Sitemap URL is correct and resubmit your Sitemap.
I have placed my sitemap.xml in root directory.

[Zaiaku]

If you useing the mod on vBulletin.org. Make sure your settings are correct. Also take a look at your .htaccess file. This usually only becomes a problem when your forum is in a subdirected, you may need to edit the .htaccess file in the root as well. You don't need to move the xml to the root directory, just need to configure your .htaccess file in the root to point to the location of the file.

[mammu]

I also have installed my forum in root directory.

just need to configure your .htaccess file in the root to point to the location of the file.

Can you tell what specific one needs to configure in .htaccess file? I mean command?