WebHelp Search Engine Optimization

A DITA WebHelp transformation scenario can be configured to produce a sitemap.xml file that is used by search engines to aid crawling and indexing mechanisms. A sitemap lists all pages of a WebHelp system and allows webmasters to provide additional information about each page, such as the date it was last updated, change frequency, and importance of each page in relation to other pages in your WebHelp deployment.

The structure of the sitemap.xml file looks like this:

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/topics/introduction.html</loc>
    <lastmod>2014-10-24</lastmod>
    <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.5</priority>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://www.example.com/topics/care.html#care</loc>
    <lastmod>2014-10-24</lastmod>
    <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.5</priority>
  </url>
   .  .  .
</urlset>

Each page has a <url> element structure containing additional information, such as:

loc - the URL of the page. This URL must begin with the protocol (such as http), if required by your web server. It is constructed from the value of the webhelp.sitemap.base.url parameter from the transformation scenario and the relative path to the page (collected from the href attribute of a topicref element in the DITA map).
Note: The value must have less than 2,048 characters.
lastmod - the date when the page was last modified. The date format is YYYY-MM-DD.
changefreq - indicates how frequently the page is likely to change. This value provides general information to assist search engines, but may not correlate exactly to how often they crawl the page. Valid values are: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and never. The first time the sitemap.xml file is generated, the value is set based upon the value of the webhelp.sitemap.change.frequency parameter in the DITA WebHelp transformation scenario. You can change the value in each url element by editing the sitemap.xml file.
Note: The value always should be used to describe documents that change each time they are accessed. The value never should be used to describe archived URLs.
priority - the priority of this page relative to other pages on your site. Valid values range from 0.0 to 1.0. This value does not affect how your pages are compared to pages on other sites. It only lets the search engines know which pages you deem most important for the crawlers. The first time the sitemap.xml file is generated, the value is set based upon the value of the webhelp.sitemap.priority parameter in the DITA WebHelp transformation scenario. You can change the value in each url element by editing the sitemap.xml file.

Note: lastmod, changefreq, and priority are optional elements.

Creating and Editing the sitemap.xml File

Follow these steps to produce a sitemap.xml file for your WebHelp system, which can then be edited to fine-tune search engine optimization:

Edit the transformation scenario you currently use for obtaining your WebHelp output. This opens the Edit DITA Scenario dialog.
Open the Parameters tab and set a value for the following parameters:
- webhelp.sitemap.base.url - the URL of the location where your WebHelp system is deployed
  Note: This parameter is required in order for Oxygen XML Editor to generate the sitemap.xml file.
- webhelp.sitemap.change.frequency - how frequently the WebHelp pages are likely to change (accepted values are: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and never)
- webhelp.sitemap.priority - the priority of each page (value ranging from 0.0 to 1.0)
Execute the transformation scenario.
Look for the sitemap.xml file in the transformation's output folder. Edit the file to fine-tune the parameters of each page, according to your needs.