Sitemap

What is sitemap?

Sitemaps are a way of mapping out the structure and organization of pages and content in website. There are two main types of sitemaps, Visual and XML. The latter being used by search engines to crawl through the website and index it for search.

Visual sitemap helps the user to understand the structure of the website content and make them easy to navigate the pages. This helps the user to get the content easily for which they are searching.

XML sitemap help search engines robots to understand the structure of the website and prioritize which pages to crawl first, which can improve the website's search engine rankings. Sitemaps can be submitted to search engines through webmaster tools, or the sitemap protocol (sitemap.xml).

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. An XML Sitemap file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

Importance of Sitemap.xml :

• Helps search engines discover all pages on a website: Sitemaps can help search engines discover pages that may not be easily found by crawling the website's links. This is especially useful for large websites, or websites with a complex structure.
• Improve crawling efficiency: A Sitemap list contains the list of all the pages on a website, which help search engines to crawl more efficiently and index the website contents, which can improve the website visibility in search results.
• Provide information about the website's pages: Sitemap file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site), this information can help search engines understand the structure of the website and prioritize which pages to crawl first.
• Help with indexing: It can help increase the chances of getting all the pages of your website indexed by providing complete URLs to search engines.
• Make it easy for search engine to understand: An XML Sitemaps is a standard format that search engines can easily understand the structure of the website and find all the webpages on it.

A sitemap is an important for improving the visibility of a website in search results, by making it easier for search engines to discover and crawl all the pages on a website, and providing important information to user about those pages.

How to make sitemap file?

There are many ways to make a sitemap file as follows.

• Manually create a sitemap: In this method, developers need to create a list of all the URLs on website and organizing them into a hierarchy, then saving the list as an XML file.
• Use a sitemap generator: There are many sitemap generator available that can create a sitemap for website by crawling its pages, such as XML Sitemaps and Google's Sitemap Generator.
• Use a plugin or module: If the website is develop on a content management system like WordPress or Joomla, a plugin or module is available to generate a sitemap for website.
• Use a website builder: Some website builders like Wix and Shopify come with inbuilt sitemap generator.

Once the sitemap have generated, need to upload it to the root directory of website and submit it to Google Search Console.

It is better to use a sitemap generator or a plugin to generate a sitemap file if there is large pages of website.

How to submit into Google Search Console ?

To submit a sitemap to Google Search Console:

• Go to Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) and sign in with your Google account.
• Select the website for which you want to submit the sitemap.
• Click on the "Sitemaps" option in the left sidebar menu.
• Click on the "Add/Test Sitemap" button.
• Enter the URL of your sitemap file (e.g., "http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml") and click "Submit".
• Wait for Google to process the sitemap. You should see a message indicating that the sitemap has been successfully submitted and is being processed.
• You can check the status of your sitemap by going back to the "Sitemaps" page in Google Search Console, where you will see the number of URLs submitted, indexed, and any errors that need to be fixed.

Note that it may take a few days for Google to process the sitemap, and it's not guaranteed that all URLs in the sitemap will be indexed. However, submitting a sitemap can help Google discover and crawl your pages more efficiently, which can improve your website's visibility in search results.