Today we will know about sitemaps. Even if you don’t have much (or any) experience with web development, you’ve probably heard of search engine optimization (SEO). This is a broad term for a huge list of techniques that can improve your site’s ranking in search engines. Many of the SEO strategies you’ll hear about focus on keywords – but other tasks are equally important.
For example, one thing you can do to increase your organic traffic is to create a sitemap. It’s a list of all the URLs on your site with some information about them What a site map does is make it easier for search engines to understand and index your content. Fortunately, you don’t need any special knowledge to assemble it.
We will explain in detail what sitemaps are and how they work. We’ll show you how to create one and tell Google about it. Let’s get to work!
An Introduction to Sitemaps
Have you ever wondered how Google finds websites and determines how to rank them? The core is Googlebot – a ‘crawler’ program that has two basic functions. The Googlebot explores the web, moving from page to page. Along the way, it visits various links and records information about how they are related Google then uses this data to generate search results, and determine what searches are most relevant to specific content.
Given Google’s massive popularity and the importance of organic (search engine) traffic in general, you’ll want to do everything you can to help this bot understand your site. That’s where sitemaps come in.
A sitemap (also called an ‘XML sitemap’) is a file that none of your visitors can see. It is marked for ‘search engine eyes only’ and lists every page on your site. As it turns out, this simple file is a very valuable tool.
Advantages of using a sitemap
Technically, you don’t need a sitemap. At the rate Googlebot (and other search engine bots) work, it will undoubtedly find and index your site on its own. However, this does not guarantee that it will see what you want to know.
A sitemap eliminates that concern by performing two primary tasks:
- It consists of a list of all the pages on your site so that Googlebot can find and explore everything.
- A sitemap includes ‘metadata’ – or relevant information about each page. This data tells bots how pages are organized and related to each other, when they were last updated, etc.
Sitemaps are necessary to ensure that Googlebot can see all the content you have to offer and understand how it is organized For this reason, creating one for your site is extremely important. Fortunately, it’s not hard to do.
Make a sitemap for your website
Since most websites don’t come ready with a sitemap, you’ll need to create one. There are many ways to do this, the most common options are:
Create a sitemap manually. It has the advantage of letting you customize your sitemap but is only recommended for experienced web developers. Use one of the tools provided by your website platform. Lots of website builders and content management systems (CMSs) offer tools or add-ons that you can use to create a sitemap. For example, WordPress users can download and install a dedicated plugin that will quickly do the job.
Use an online sitemap generator. These tools are mostly platform-agnostic and are usually a great option. You don’t need to install anything extra on your site and the process is usually quick and easy.
To explain the last and most flexible option, let’s take a look at the aptly-named XML-Sitemaps generator:
This tool is easy to use, and free as long as your website has less than 500 pages All you have to do is enter your site’s original URL in the field at the top of the page and then click Start. The generator will crawl your site, which will take a few minutes (depending on the size of your site):
You will then be presented with a summary page, like this:
Then, select Download your XML sitemap file to save it to your computer After that, all you have to do is upload the file to the root directory of your website. If you’re not sure how to do this, check out our File Transfer Protocol (FTP) guide for all the details.
How to tell Google about your new sitemap
This last step is technically optional. If you create a sitemap and upload it to your site, Googlebot will eventually find it. However, you can speed up the process and request the bot to view this new information sooner. To do this, you need to add your sitemap to Google Search Console:
It’s a dashboard that provides a number of handy tools for managing your website. It’s completely free, and all you need is a Google account If you haven’t used Search Console before, you’ll need to add your site as a new property first.
Then, select your site from the main page of the search console:
You’ll be taken to a central dashboard, where you’ll want to navigate to Crawl > Sitemap:
Select the Add/Test Sitemap button, enter the URL where your sitemap is located, and press Submit:
Select the Add/Test Sitemap button, enter the URL where your sitemap is located, and press Submit. After that, when you refresh the page you’ll see your new sitemap listed. That’s it! Google will be notified of your new sitemap and should check it soon. In the meantime, you may want to explore the rest of what Search Console has to offer For example, you can see whether Googlebot encountered any errors while crawling your site under Crawl Errors and details of its activity under Crawl Statistics.
Conclusion
Effective SEO involves more than just using keywords on your website. This requires providing search engines like Google with all the information they need to understand your content. Creating a sitemap is one of the easiest and best ways to do this. This list of pages will tell search engine crawlers all they need to know about the pages and structure of your site. As we have seen, you can easily create a sitemap using online generators. Then you just need to upload it to your site and add it to Google Search Console to speed up the crawling process.
