There are millions of websites on the internet, and it can be hard to compete with them if you don’t have the right resources. SEO, or search engine optimization, is one of the most important tools you can use to boost your website. It can help bring more traffic and get your content noticed by Google and other search engines.
This will boost your internet ranking and make it easier for people to find your content. Sitemaps are especially helpful for this. But what are sitemaps?
How complicated are they, and what do they do? Keep reading and learn more about how sitemaps work below how to set them up and the different types you need to understand. If you have questions or need help with your website the SEO marketing team at Cindtoro is here to lend a hand. Lets Begin!
What Are Sitemaps and How Do They Work?
You can think of a sitemap as a blueprint that maps out your website. This blueprint is necessary for search engines to understand your website and know that it exists. Sitemaps in technical SEO are vital.
But how do sitemaps work? Google finds and understands websites in a very particular way. Google first needs to find a website and then crawl it.
You can imagine crawling as Google sends out little spiders to find different pages of content on your website. Once Google flows through every portion of your website, it will index the site. Indexing allows Google to establish the site and rank it on the internet.
Depending on where your website ranks, people will start finding your content. If your content ranks low, it will be difficult for people to find it because it will be buried under other content. But if your content ranks high, it might end up on Google’s first page, where it will be very easy for people to see.
This is where the majority of people find the most benefit from undertaking things such as SEO. The name of the game is high ranking keywords in places where people can actually find them. If you are struggling to gain the website traffic you know you should be getting it is time to check into your SEO.
But what are Google sitemaps, and how do they fit into all this? The problem with Google’s crawling and indexing is that this process is not always so straightforward.
How To Find The Sitemap Of A Website
A sitemap can be found in many different ways however generally speaking a websites sitemap can be found by typing in the following: www.YourWebsiteUrl.com/sitemap.xml or www.YourWebsiteUrl.com/sitemap_index.xml If for whatever reason you cannot find the sitemap located under these two common url methods you should check the robots.txt file of the website as it may be hidden in there.
To find the Robots.txt file go to www.YourWebsiteUrl.com/robots.txt It may also be found using the Google Search Console GSC ( if you don’t have one in the Google Search Console then you will need to create a new one. More on that later…
Understanding Sitemaps
If your website isn’t organized properly, it will be very difficult or impossible for Google to rank your site.
This is because they have a hard time finding all of the content on your website. Their systems may start on one landing page and then have a hard time moving to related pages. This may be because you don’t have many links connecting different pieces of content together.
It may also be because you don’t have an XML sitemap. What are XML sitemaps? A sitemap makes it easier to guide Google through the different pieces of content your website has.
A sitemap is necessary if the organization of your website is complicated or extensive. Since a sitemap acts as a blueprint, Google can read it to figure out where to go. This ensures that Google doesn’t encounter any roadblocks when figuring out where to go next on your website.
This makes it easier to crawl and index the entire site instead of just a few parts of it. This is important because you could encounter many problems if only parts of your site is indexed, but the others are not. This then translates into having sections of your website that get a lot of traffic while the other parts don’t get any.
If Google doesn’t crawl and index your site, it won’t rank it either. This will make it next to impossible for anyone to find your content. This is bad news if you’re trying to use your site for business.
The problem is that many people have no idea what sitemaps are and don’t know if they have them or not. If you’ve tried everything to improve your website’s traffic and engagement but to no avail, it may be because you don’t have a valid sitemap.
What Are Sitemaps Used For?
Sitemaps are not only only for helping Google crawl and index your website pages. They are also important for your overall SEO plan. Your website won’t get very far without search engine optimization.
SEO is what makes your website more appealing to search engines. The more appealing and organized your website is, the higher it will rank. This makes it easier for people to find your website.
The more website traffic you get, the more successful your website will be. The great thing about sitemaps is they can show Google and other search engines which pages are the most important on your website.
This will tell Google to pay more attention when crawling and indexing your pages. They help to highlight important pages like the contact page, as well as the main service page. Google is not the only search engine that relies on sitemaps to explore websites, either.
The easier it is for Google to record your site, the better chance your site will be a success. Having a sitemap is like having a safety net. It gives you an extra layer of protection for discoverability and indexing.
What Are the Different Types Of Sitemaps For SEO?
Did you know Google has four different types of search engines you can rank on? They are Google News, Images, Video and Web (or standard Google search.) There are many types of website sitemaps available to use. We are gong to briefly touch on the follwing XML, HTML, Image, News, and Video sitemaps.
XML
The XML sitemap is the most useful for search engines specifically because it is used to inform the search engine about the content on your website using a format that is designed for the machine to read. The data sent in the XML sitemap will be things such as the page author, publish date and time as well as the URL.
HTML
The HTML sitemap is not technically a sitemap per say but rather to is used to distribute valuable page rank and internal links to pages on your website. An important concept in SEO is orphaned pages. (pages with 1 or fewer internal links pointing to them. The HTML sitemap helps to solve these issues by displaying all links to your website in one place that is simple to navigate. If you need an example of this you can go here
IMAGE
Image sitemaps help your website images get found by search engines. These sitemaps are very useful for telling search engines like Google or Bing about the types of image files you have on your website. Image sitemaps can help optimize your website for Google image search and SEO
NEWS
The Google News sitemap helps your website rank well within the Google news search results by rapidly informing the search engine about news content your publication has produced.
VIDEO SITEMAP
The video sitemap helps the search engine read and understand video content on your website. If you produce a lot of content via video then you need to highly consider using the video sitemap.
What Do Search Engines Expect From Your Sitemap?
Given that a sitemap is a blueprint of your website. It requires a lot of information to create a meaningful one. Without enough information, a sitemap would be useless to both you and Google.
The more information you have, the better. Consider asking questions such as how many pages your website has or what kind of content is hosted on it? Does it have a lot of media content, such as pictures and videos?
What about your links? Do you have many internal links that connect your content?
All of this information is vital when creating a sitemap. Search engines expect to find this information when going over a sitemap, regardless of the type. This makes it easier for Google to find every corner of your site and index it.
The good news is that you don’t have to do all this manually. When you create a sitemap, most of this information will automatically be in the mix. This ensures you don’t have to stress yourself out or do all the heavy lifting.
What You Need to Know About Sitemaps
You don’t have to be very tech-savvy to create a sitemap. You just need to make sure that you make the right type of sitemap with the right information.
Your sitemap should have a list of all the pages on your website. If it does not, you may need to create another one, as it does not have all the information. You should find the page of every blog, product, and main page you have on the sitemap list.
This shows that the sitemap created a comprehensive and complete map of your website. You can then submit the sitemap and wait for the magic to happen. Google will use the sitemap as soon as it’s submitted.
But don’t expect to get a huge increase in traffic overnight by doing this. If you are already following a lot of technical SEO strategies, a sitemap may not make that big of a difference. It may function as a small but important boost.
But if your website is very large and complicated, a sitemap may make a big difference in the way Google indexes and promotes your site.
How to Generate a Sitemap
While creating a sitemap may sound complicated, it is a simple process that anyone can do. You first need to consider what kind of website you have. Suppose you have a WordPress site.
This is one of the easiest ways to create a sitemap. If you have the Yoast SEO plugin, it will do most of the work for you. Follow the instructions, and Yoast SEO will create a sitemap for you.
The great thing about this type of sitemap is that it’s dynamic. This means it will update automatically if anything about your website changes. This ensures you don’t have to go into the sitemap and make updates yourself.
There are many other plugins on WordPress you can use that do similar things. But what if your website isn’t on WordPress? Don’t worry, because there are still plenty of other ways you can create a sitemap.
The Last Steps
After you have your sitemap give this file to Google and submit it. Google will then crawl your website, index it, and rank it. Always make sure to verify the information prior to publishing after it is generated.
To give the sitemap file to Google, you need to access your account for Google Search Console. Click on the menu, and then click on the sitemap section.
You can then submit the sitemap. If you have already done this, you can browse the previous sitemaps you submitted. Once you see the text, “Sitemap index processed successfully,” congratulations!
This means that Google has taken the time to crawl the sitemap. You can then browse Google’s index of your site and see if it looks alright.
All About Google Sitemaps
Now that you have an explanation of what sitemaps are & how to use them for SEO it is time to put the knowledge to good use. When you think about sitemaps we want you to think about technical SEO blueprints for Google that make it easier to crawl and index your site. This will make it easier for people to find your site.
Are you ready to give your site a boost with technical SEO? Check out our marketing digital services and see how we can help grow your website traffic using the best SEO strategies available.