A sitemap is like a blueprint of the website. A sitemap is a file that lists the pages on a site to enable the search engine to discover, crawl, and index them. It ensures search engines understand the website and find the important content’s hierarchy.
Why is a Sitemap Important?
- With the help of sitemap search engines can find all the relevant pages even that pages which have no links.
- Crawling – Improves the crawling of search engines ie it helps search engines to know what there is on the website and if it finds it gives a green signal to crawl the website.
- Improves SEO and optimization – Ensures that significant pages get indexed, thus appearing in search results.
- Shows Which Content is Important – Tells search engines what is important to index.
Best Practices for Sitemaps
- When you need to make an XML sitemap, you can either use a sitemap generator or use plugins on your CMS like Yoast used in WordPress.
- Make Sure Important Pages Are Included – Look for wrong “no index” tags that stop good pages from appearing.
- Send to Search Engines – Add your sitemap to Google Search Console so it can be discovered and crawled.
- Make sure your sitemap is automatically updated when you add or remove pages.
How to Find and Submit a Sitemap
- Locate Your Sitemap – Common URLs.
- domain.com/sitemap.xml.
- domain.com/sitemap_index.xml.
To submit your sitemap to Google Search Console, you need to navigate to “Sitemaps,” enter your sitemap and submit it.
- To your robots.txt — Add this line to your robots.txt file.
- Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.
A sitemap helps your chances of getting indexed by the search engine. It also helps achieve enhanced visibility.
