What is Sitemap ?
Sitemap is very important for our website. Website Sitemap works as a guide. For example, when we go to visit monuments, there are guides there which give us information about even the smallest things related to that place. Our sitemaps are similar. When search engine crawlers visit our site, the sitemap tells them about our content, videos, images. Sitemap takes full care that none of our pages should remain without being crawled or indexed. Crawlers read every single thing on our website. And it presents our content in a nice and systematic way in front of crawlers. It is a file that provides information related to video , images , audio and content on our site .
There are type of sitemaps :-
1. XML sitemaps –
It contains the information about the latest changes in our website pages . about which topic our website relates and many more useful information about the website. In short we say it gives a blueprint for our website to Googlebot. It enhances indexing.
It is good for large websites sitemaps.
2. HTML sitemaps –
It provides a visual representation of our website structures. It increases SEO by internal linking.
3. Video sitemaps –
It focuses only on video content on your website. It helps search engines to understand your video motive , video tile and description , page URL , etc.
4.Image sitemaps –
It focuses only on image content of your website and helps crawlers to understand the message of your image . It is good for those websites who keep their image secret .
This website sitemap is mostly used by photographers , e-commerce websites.
5. Mobile sitemaps –
It checks whether the website is mobile friendly. Since not everyone uses a laptop, it is important for our website to be mobile friendly which will increase the website interaction.
6. News sitemaps –
This sitemap is mostly used by publishers to submit their news content to google news . It contains articles, blogs, keywords and article tiles , description. It timely updates new articles on SERPS.
Why do we use website Sitemaps ?
- If all the pages of our site are properly connected to each other then they will reach Google crawlers through the navigation form but sometimes pages are not linked on large sites and that is a problem.
- If our site is large then we should use website sitemap because on large sites it is not possible for the crawler to crawl all the pages. Sitemap makes the crawler’s work easy. For example, Amazon has a very large site with many pages and different categories. They will need a sitemap to index and crawl all their pages because sometimes when the pages are too deep, crawlers cannot reach them but the sitemap guides them.
- If we have video, images or news related information on our site and we want to show it on search results then we will need a sitemap because sitemap can help Google to find out and understand new content in our website
- If our site is new and there is external linking then we should use sitemap because Google bot crawls your website through the URL which is present in our old pages, if the URL is not there then it cannot crawl it, due to which our pages remain unindexed and this has a negative impact on our website as the bounce back rate increases.
Tricks to maintain website sitemaps
1. Avoid Duplicate Content-
Duplicate content creates confusion and if anything is repeated too many times then it will give negative views to your site.
2. Avoid 404 Pages –
this error occurs when a page does not exist , try to avoid this situation.
3. Regular Updates –
daily update your sitemap if a page is added or a page is modified.
4. Avoid thin content –
Content plays a crucial role in our SEO journey. If the content of our website is less than 500 words, it will come under thin content and then no matter how good SEO we do, our website will never rank on SERPS .
5. Implementation of structured data markup –
It helps search engines to read and understand our page better . for ex- whether our page is about how to cook, how to expertise and many more.
How to Apply website Sitemaps on Your Website ?
- Sign up in google search console.
- Select your website property and index your website by giving the URL of your site.
- Select the website map from the left menu.
- Then, enter your website sitemap URL.
- Click “ submit”.
Importance of Website Sitemaps in SEO
- Indexing – It improves indexing, as sitemap helps search engines to find and index those pages who might note easily found by internal linking.
- Improves Crawling – when you post a new blog , video, audio . Sitemap informs search engines quickly.
- Prioritization – Now you give priority to your pages it helps crawlers to understand which page crawls first.
Final Thought
A well defined website sitemap helps you to attract search consoles on your website. By providing search engines a neat and clean interface you increase the chance to rank your website on top . Daily update your sitemap even if there is a little change still update , this shows how much you are dedicated to your work . Try to solve user queries by engaging. Only the right sitemap describes your website structure.
