In the ever-changing world of search engine optimization, sometimes the simplest solutions are the ones that benefit you the most. Here are sitemaps. This simple yet effective tool is a low-effort, high-impact way to increase your site’s visibility in organic search results.
What are sitemaps?
A sitemap is a page on the website that displays links to all URLs of that site. It also provides additional information about those links, such as how frequently they are updated and their importance for search engines. Sitemaps are primarily created for search engine crawlers (automated programs that systematically browse the internet to index web content for search engines), although their information can also be a helpful reference for site owners.
Why are sitemaps important?
Sitemaps allow search engines to quickly and easily discover your site’s content so they can index it and display that content on relevant search results pages. This is important because unindexed content cannot be found on search results pages, and ranking on the top search results pages can provide effective, cost-efficient organic traffic to your site.
Sitemaps are not the only way for search engines to discover content – they crawl external links from one site to another and then crawl internal links within the site. However, sitemaps make this process more efficient and help showcase content that may be harder to find through internal links.
They are somewhat like a directory of stores in a shopping mall. Of course, you can wander through all the stores, but that will take time, and you will surely miss many of them. On the other hand, a store directory allows you to see every store in an easy-to-read list.
What are the different types of sitemaps?
Image Sitemaps
Image sitemaps display the URLs of images on the site to help search engines crawl and index them for image searches. A comprehensive image index is particularly useful for industries where users perform visual searches more frequently, such as fashion, beauty, and home décor.
Properly constructed image sitemaps should list the URL of the page, followed by all the images on that page with the image URL in the <image:image> tag.
Video Sitemaps
Video sitemaps are similar to image sitemaps, except they display videos instead of images. Video sitemaps can showcase videos hosted on your website and not those hosted from an external source (like being uploaded to YouTube and embedded on your site).
Properly constructed video sitemaps should list the URL of the page, followed by all the videos on that page with the video URL in the <video:video> tag. You can also add extra information about the videos, such as title, description, duration, view count, and publication date.
News Sitemaps
News sitemaps display news articles that publishers want to submit to Google News. This helps search engines easily access content worthy of news for faster indexing and ranking, which is important when people are looking for the latest information.
News sitemaps also contain additional information specific to the publisher, such as the publication name, date, and title.
Mobile Sitemaps
Mobile sitemaps contain links to mobile versions of your website’s content. While this is useful if you have separate desktop and mobile versions for your site, Google strongly discourages this setup. If your site is responsive and works well for mobile users, mobile sitemaps add redundancy and may confuse Google crawlers.
Sitemaps
HTML vs XML Sitemaps
There are two types of sitemaps you should consider for your website: HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps.
What is an HTML Sitemap?
An HTML sitemap is a page on your website that contains links to all of its content. It’s called an HTML sitemap because the content is presented via HTML (HyperText Markup Language) of the page.
HTML sitemaps, like those found in the LOLA e-commerce store, are designed to help users find content. HTML sitemaps have no benefit for SEO and should not be used instead of an XML sitemap.
What is an XML Sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a file on your website that is created using a type of code called Extensible Markup Language (XML). This type of sitemap is designed for search engine crawlers, not for users. As shown in the image below of Shopify’s XML sitemap, it contains only the code for the sitemap and no branding or user-friendly content.
An XML sitemap can provide additional information for each URL, such as: Last Modified Date. The <lastmod> tag indicates the last modified date of the URL. It should always be in the format YYYY-MM-DD. Change Frequency. The <changefreq> tag tells search engines how often the page is updated. The value should be written as hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, always, or never. Priority. The <priority> tag tells search engines the importance of each page. 1 is the highest and 0 is the lowest. If a value is not provided, the default value is assumed to be 0.5.
Should I use an HTML or XML Sitemap for my website?
All websites should use an XML sitemap to help search engines crawl and index content. You may choose to use an HTML sitemap to assist users, but there is no benefit for SEO with this format, and users are unlikely to use an HTML sitemap on modern websites. An HTML sitemap should not be used instead of an XML sitemap for SEO purposes.
How many sitemaps should my website have?
You may often hear about “the sitemap,” but most websites actually have multiple sitemaps. These can be sitemaps for different types of content, as mentioned above, or sitemaps grouped by sections of the site (such as a sitemap for the blog, one for product pages, etc.).
If you have multiple sitemaps, you should have a sitemap index file. This is a sitemap of sitemaps – instead of linking to individual URLs, it links to each specific sitemap file.
Tips for Creating Sitemaps
Submit your sitemap to search engines
Submit your sitemap to Google and Bing. Web crawlers can find your sitemap if you don’t submit it, but it’s good to make it as easy as possible for them to visit your sitemap regularly. In Google, this is done through your Google Search Console account, and in Bing, through your Bing Webmaster Tools account.
When submitting your sitemap, you should provide URLs for the sitemap index as well as individual sitemaps.
Only include relevant URLs
A sitemap should not contain all the pages of your site. It should only include those you want indexed by search engines. This means you can leave out pages like privacy policies, password-protected pages, post-purchase pages, and anything else you don’t want a search engine to visit and display in search results.
In addition
Additionally, the sitemap should not contain any external links, only pages on your site. Each XML sitemap file should be less than 50 megabytes and contain fewer than 50,000 URLs. If your site is larger than that, create multiple sitemap files and a sitemap index file.
Provide Relevant Information
A good sitemap should contain links to the important pages on your site, but a great sitemap should include as much additional information about those pages as possible. This includes the last modified date of the page, the update frequency, and image tags. The more information you provide, the easier it is for search engines to understand what to do with your content and how often they need to index it.
Organize Your Sitemap
Organize your sitemap logically and sequentially, grouping similar content types such as product pages, blog articles, and service pages. This makes it easier for search engines like Google and Bing to browse and index your content.
Frequently Asked Questions About Sitemaps
How can I create a sitemap?
Many popular content management systems, like Shopify, will automatically generate a sitemap for your website. You can usually find it in the site settings or SEO settings in the backend of your site. You can also learn how to create a sitemap yourself or use a sitemap generator.
What is the most common format for sitemaps?
XML and HTML are the most common formats for sitemaps, though HTML sitemaps are less common than they used to be and do not provide any SEO benefit.
How can I submit my sitemap to Google?
You can submit your sitemap to Google by verifying the ownership of your website property in Google Search Console, then going to the “Sitemaps” section and submitting the link there. If you have multiple sitemaps, be sure to submit the link to the sitemap index file along with each individual sitemap.
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