XML Sitemap: What is it?
It can be tough to find a new destination without a map, just as it can be tough for Google to find all your pages on the site without an XML sitemap.
Creating and submitting a Sitemap to Google is actually really easy! In this article we will go through how to do this, but first some basics.
Do you already know what a sitemap is? Jump straight to creating one!
What’s an XML sitemap?
A sitemap is an XML file that lists all the content on your site. All the pages and files that you want the search engines to detect should be in your Sitemap.
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Some quick information about XML Sitemaps
Sitemaps cannot list more than URLs, nor can they be larger than 50 MB in size. However, you’ll need to submit multiple Sitemaps, If your XML Sitemap exceeds one of these two.
What does an XML sitemap look like?
Below you can see what our sitemap looks like on the frontal end, not so exciting. However, you can enter your site, If you want to check out yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
Why do I need a Sitemap?
Why then need an XML sitemap? Google finds new content by spinning (crawling) the web. When it spins a page, it looks at both internal and external links. However, the search engine can not find all the content in this way.
This is where Sitemaps come into play. These tell Google (and other search engines) where the most important pages are on your site so that it can spider and index them. This is important because Google can not rank your content without indexing it first.
Related article: The difference between inbound links and internal links (and outbound links vs external links)
How to create an XML Sitemap?
Multiplex CMS tools automatically create a Sitemap for you. In addition, they’re automatically updated when you add or make changes to your site.
However, our tip is to download Yoast SEO, If your CMS tool doesn’t create a sitemap for you. You can see this on our sitemap earlier in this article, where it says “Generated by YoastSEO” because that plugin has created our sitemap.
However, these CMS tools will automatically generate a Sitemap for your website, If you use Wix or Squarespace. You can also choose to turn this off if, for some reason, you don’t want Google to index your site.
How to submit your XML sitemap to Google?
To submit your Sitemap to Google, you need to know where it is. It’s usually found at the URL yourSite/sitemap.xml
Then go to Google Search Console> Sitemaps> Copy In URL> Click Submit
Clear!
Conclusion
Every website must provide a Sitemap to both visitors and search engines, as both of them are important for its online survival. A good sitemap shows each destination page, its importance, its relevancy and therefore helps in increasing the value of a website
Do you have questions about XML Sitemaps? Send us an email and we will be more than happy to help you! You probably already have a Sitemap and just need to submit it to Google!
Good luck!
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