If you want to optimize your website’s performance in search engines, it is crucial to understand the importance of sitemaps. In this guide, we will explore the two types of sitemaps—XML and HTML—as well as different methods of creating them. We will also go through sitemap generators and Content Management System (CMS) plugins.
A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages and all the content on a website, along with how they relate to each other. This file helps crawlers from search engines like Google understand the structure of a website and how the pages are connected, something that is important for effective indexing.
Without a sitemap, search engines may miss certain pages on your website or take longer to find them, which in turn can be harmful to your site’s ranking.
This is the most common type of sitemap. It is an XML file that lists all the pages on a website, along with metadata such as the last modification date and the priority of each page. This is the type of sitemap that web crawlers need in order to effectively index your website.
If your website contains video material, it is important to use a video sitemap to help search engines—especially Google—understand and index your videos correctly. A video sitemap contains specific information about your videos, such as title, description, duration, and URL. By using a video sitemap, you can increase the chances of your videos appearing in search results and gain more visibility.
If your website produces news content and is approved for Google News, it is important to use a news sitemap to help Google find and index your news articles correctly. A news sitemap contains information about your news articles, including headline, publication date, news source, and a unique article URL. By providing a news sitemap, you increase the chances of your news articles being displayed in Google News and driving more traffic to your website.
If your website contains many images, an image sitemap can be very helpful in guiding search engines to these images. An image sitemap includes a list of all images on your website, along with information such as image URL, title, description, and any additional attributes. By using an image sitemap, you can improve the visibility of your images in image searches and increase the chances of users finding your website through image results.
There are different ways to create a sitemap. You can create a sitemap manually by listing all the pages on your website and their relationship to each other, although this method is recommended only for small websites with relatively simple structures.
Another option is to use a sitemap generator, which is an online tool that can automatically generate a sitemap for your site. You only need to enter your website’s URL, and the tool will crawl your site to generate the sitemap.
Of course, we have a recommendation for a sitemap generator that you can use so you don’t have to search yourself. XML-Sitemaps.com is a great option for quickly and easily creating a sitemap for your website.
If you are using a Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress or Joomla, you can install a sitemap plugin that automatically generates and updates your sitemap when you add or remove pages. In that case, we recommend using Yoast SEO.
The advantage of Yoast SEO is that it will automatically update your sitemap. When a new page is created and added, it will dynamically update your sitemap. If you are not using Yoast SEO, you can use Google XML Sitemaps, which is a good alternative.
Once you have created your sitemap, you need to submit it to search engines such as Google and Bing, for example through Google Search Console or Bing’s equivalent. First, you must verify that you own the website by adding a verification code or file to your site.
After that, you can create an account with the search engine and add your website to your account. We will show you how to use Google Search Console, but the process works in a similar way for other search engines.
In your Google Search Console, in the menu on the right, you will see:“Indexing” > “Sitemaps”
If you have already submitted a sitemap, you will see them listed under “Submitted sitemaps.”
To submit a sitemap, simply enter your URL under “Add a new sitemap.”
After that, you’re done, provided you haven’t received any error messages. Keep in mind that it can take up to 48 hours before Google has crawled your website.
To maximize the benefits of sitemaps, we’ve put together the following tips and things to keep in mind.
If you have a site with several hundred or thousands of pages, you can split them into several smaller sitemaps. This is a recommendation from Google itself.
Search engines like Google and Bing allow a maximum size of 50MB for your sitemaps. Make sure to keep them below this limit. If your file starts approaching 50MB, begin planning how to break your sitemap into smaller ones.
Each link in a sitemap has a date attribute. Be sure not to change these unless you’ve made significant updates. Google may interpret this as a tactic to appear more relevant, which could have the opposite effect than intended.
HTML sitemaps are more for users since they provide an overview of the different categories and pages on a website. This type of sitemap is most often found in the footer section of a site. Google does not need this to crawl your website, but an HTML sitemap can positively impact user experience.
You want your robots.txt and sitemap to work together. For example, you don’t want your robots.txt to block Google’s crawlers from reading a specific page that is included in your sitemap. This would send mixed signals to Google, which could harm your performance. Be sure to read up on how to use redirects and no-index tags to resolve such issues.
Sitemaps can give you information about which of your pages are indexed and which are not. This information can provide insights into what needs to be fixed to perform better in search engines.For example, you might have a thousand pages, but only 300 are indexed by Google. In that case, go through those pages and check what they have in common, or don’t, and fix the issues. This could be due to duplicate content or exceeding your crawl budget at the moment.
A sitemap is an important file that lists all the pages and content on a website, helping search engines understand the site’s structure and effectively index the pages.
To optimize your sitemap, it’s recommended to follow best practices, such as keeping it under 50MB, not changing dates unnecessarily, and breaking it down into several smaller sitemaps if needed.
By creating and managing an effective sitemap, you can improve your website’s performance in search engines and ensure that all pages on your site are indexed correctly and efficiently.