What is an XML sitemap? Why is it Important for SEO?

What is an XML sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a file containing a list of the web pages found on a website that’s arranged in order from the root (or home) page to a ‘top’ page.

A sitemap is a method for structuring and tracking pages in a website and is mainly used by webmasters or web crawling robots for navigating and navigating their website and finding out more about their site.

Adding a URL to a sitemap file does not guarantee that a URL will be crawled or indexed. However, it can result in the search engine discovering and indexing pages that it otherwise would not. This programme is a complement to, not a replacement for, the search engines’ normal operation.

Matt Cutts, the former head of Google’s webspam team, has explained XML sitemaps in the following way: Imagine if you had pages A, B, and C on your site. We find pages A and B through our normal web crawl of your links. Then you build a sitemap and list the pages B and C. Now there’s a chance (but not a promise) that we’ll crawl page C. We won’t drop page A just because you didn’t list it in your sitemap.

And just because you listed a page that we didn’t know about doesn’t guarantee that we’ll crawl it. But if for some reason, we didn’t see any links to C, or maybe we knew about page C, but the URL was rejected for having too many parameters or some other reason, now there’s a chance that we’ll crawl that page C.

Sitemaps use a simple XML format that you can learn at www.sitemaps.org. XML sitemaps are a useful and in some cases, essential tool for your website. In particular, if you have reason to believe that the site is not fully indexed, an XML sitemap can help you increase the number of indexed pages. As sites grow in size, the value of XML sitemap files tends to increase dramatically, as additional traffic flows to the newly included URLs.

How to create XML Sitemaps for Google?

When you create a sitemap, you’re essentially telling search engines which URLs you want to appear in search results. The canonical URLs are the ones that you should use. If you have the same information available at many URLs, select the one you want and include it in the sitemap instead of including all of them.

Once you’ve selected which URLs to include in the sitemap, you may generate it in one of the following ways, depending on the architecture and size of your site:

• Allow your content management system to produce a sitemap for you.
• You can manually generate a sitemap for sitemaps with fewer than a few dozen URLs.
• Create a sitemap automatically for sitemaps with more than a few hundred URLs.

If you’re using a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, Wix, or Blogger, it’s probable that a sitemap has already been made available to search engines. Search for information on how your CMS creates sitemaps, or how to construct a sitemap if one isn’t generated automatically. For instance, in the case of Wix, look for “wix sitemap.”

All other site layouts will require you to create your own sitemap.

You’ll need to build the sitemap if your sitemap has more than a few dozen URLs. A sitemap may be created using a variety of tools. However, having your website software produce it for you is the best option. You may, for example, extract your website’s URLs from its database and then export them to the screen or a file on your web server. Discuss this option with your developers or server management.

Check out our archived collection of third-party sitemap generators for coding ideas.

A sitemap isn’t examined every time Google crawls a site; it’s only checked the first time we see it, and then only when you ping us to let them know it’s updated. Only notify Google about new or updated sitemaps; do not submit or ping unaltered sitemaps several times.