What is a sitemap? How to Create an XML Sitemap.
- What is a sitemap?
- Types of sitemap?
- What is an XML sitemap?
- What is an HTML sitemap?
- Structure of XML sitemap?
- Why sitemap is important?
- Basic practices of XML sitemap?
- benefits of having a sitemap for a website?
1. What is a sitemap?
A sitemap is a file that lists all the URLs of a website, providing information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site. The purpose of a sitemap is to help search engines discover and index all the pages on a website, by providing information about the hierarchy and relationships between the pages. Sitemaps can be used to inform search engines about new or updated pages, as well as to provide additional information about the content of each page, such as its last modification date and how frequently it is updated. Submitting a sitemap to search engines can improve the visibility and ranking of a website in search results.
2. Types of sitemap.
There are two types of sitemaps: HTML and XML.
- What is an HTML sitemap:
- HTML Sitemap: An HTML sitemap is a webpage that lists all the pages of a website in a simple, organized format. It’s meant to help visitors navigate a site, not to aid search engines in crawling and indexing the site. It’s usually linked to from the footer of a site and provides an easy way for visitors to find all the pages of a website.
- What is an XML sitemap:
- XML Sitemap: An XML sitemap is a structured format that lists all the pages of a website and information about those pages (such as when they were last updated) to help search engines crawl and index the site. It’s a machine-readable file that is designed for search engines, not for human visitors.
3. Structure of XML sitemap.
1.<urlset>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″>
The root element that contains all the information about the URLs in the sitemap.
2.<url> – An element that describes a single URL, including its location and information about how often it’s updated and how important it is relative to other pages on the site.
3.<loc>
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
The URL of the page being described.
4.<lastmod>
<lastmod> 2020-04-01</lastmod>
The date the page was last modified.
5.<changefreq>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
How often the page is expected to change.
6.<priority>
<priority> 0.8</priority>
The relative importance of this URL compared to other URLs on the site.
The HTML sitemap is just a simple list of links to the pages on a site, so it doesn’t have a specific structure.
4. Why sitemap is important
A sitemap has to play a significant role in SEO. It helps search engines crawl and index all pages on a website more efficiently.
- It helps search engines crawl and index all pages on a website more efficiently.
- It provides information about the website’s structure and content to search engines.
- It makes it easier for users to find all pages on the site, especially if the site has a complex structure.
- It helps to improve the website’s SEO by allowing search engines to better understand the site’s hierarchy and organization.
5. Essential practices for creating and submitting an XML sitemap
1. Create an XML Sitemap
If your website is built on WordPress, you can use plugins like Rankmath or Yoast SEO, or Google XML Sitemaps to make your sitemaps automatically, these plugins create XML sitemaps for your website Automatically. These tools will make and update your sitemaps as you keep adding new pages, posts, and categories to your site.
2. Check your Sitemap
Let’s suppose you installed the rank math SEO plugin, to check the XML sitemap go to rank math then click on the sitemap settings, and then you will be redirected to the next screen in which you will see “Your sitemap index can be found here” click on it to see your websites XML sitemap, after that copy the URL and then go to Google search console and paste it.
3. Submit Sitemap to Google Search Console
After creating Xml sitemap, The final step is to submit your sitemap to Google search console. All you need to do is to login into your Google search console account. Once logged in, go to the “Index” section and click on “Sitemaps”, and then click on “Add a new sitemap” add the URL of your sitemap after adding Xml sitemap URL click on submit button.
On this page, you will be able to see the list of all the previously submitted sitemaps for your website.
6. Some benefits of having a sitemap for a website?
- Improved website crawling and indexing by search engines like google.
- Better organization and structure of website content for search engines to read .
- Facilitation of the discovery of new or recently updated pages,posts, categories.
- Improved user experience through easier navigation.
- Increased visibility and potential for higher search engine rankings.
- Ability to include additional information about pages, such as frequency of updates and priority(Within a sitemap, you can set priority to URLs. Once you set this priority, search engine bots will focus more on these URLs over others).