SEO (Search Engine Optimization) includes a wide variety of strategies to boost your site’s presence in the SERPs. Today, we’ll look at what a sitemap is , how to create one, and, most importantly , why they’re a must for any solid SEO strategy .
Let’s start by putting the meat on the grill (or portobellos
For vegetarians). A sitemap is a file that breaks down a website’s content and indicates the relationships between its different pages.
To put it more clearly: think of your sitemap brother cell phone list as a travel guide . Google is on vacation on your website, and to ensure an optimiz experience, you’re showing it the best places to visit.
Although, to be precise, rather than a travel guide, a sitemap is a “map” of the website. A rather unconventional one, though. It typically looks like a structur list of cod elements (in the case of XML sitemaps). It can also consist (in the case of HTML sitemaps) of a table or a series of link sections , or even a list of those links .
A sitemap is a file that breaks down the content of a website and indicates the relationships between its different pages.
What is a Sitemap and why is it important for SEO?
Now, how does this relate to SEO? Let’s see, there are billions of web pages . When we do a search, Google crawls all of those pages to find the site that best answers what we’re searching for. But first, it crawls their sitemaps.
These, if well-organiz, help Google identify you more quickly and, if it determines your content is suitable, include it in its search results. Of course, to appear in Google’s search results , a website must be index in its system. And sitemaps help with this.
The logic behind sitemaps is, in very general terms, the same as that behind Tinder profiles. By including three or four tags from a list of interests , it’s easier for a user to decide whether to match or not. Of course, you can also read the person’s bibliography or stalk them online before matching, but this takes longer. The same would happen if Google reviews a website page by page , either to index it or to include it in its SERPs ( Search Engine Results Pages ).
Consequently, including a sitemap helps
Google get an idea of what a website is like. If it likes what it sees, it will match it and send a bot to read the page. The bot can do so quickly, taiwan lists using the sitemap as a guide . It will then ultimately decide whether to index it and, consequently, whether to include it in its SERPs.
As if that weren’t enough, thanks to a sitemap, Google will index your pages and include them in search results not as it sees fit, but as you see tools and resources to improve your sitemap fit. By identifying a website’s most important pages , a sitemap tells Google what order to follow when indexing them.
Types of Sitemaps and their uses
As we mention above, there are different types of sitemaps . Each one performs specific functions, although, in general, they always help facilitate Google indexing and improve search results. Let’s take a look at what they are.
XML Sitemap
When talking about sitemaps, we’re usually referring to XML sitemaps . These are files that use the Extensible Markup Language (XML ) format to list a website’s pages (URLs). They’re specifically design for SEO optimization , meaning they serve as a “map” of the site for search engines.
“Search engines” in the plural because, although they are generally associat with Google, XML sitemaps can be us with other search engines , such as Bing and Yahoo. This allows them to exponentially increase a website’s visibility.
More specifically, this type of sitemap is usually in the form of a list . Each website URL list in the sitemap has specific tags (such as <url>, <lastmod>, or <loc>). These not only allow you to structure the information , but also tell search engines how to use and interpret your content .
XML Sitemap Example
Thus, XML sitemaps serve to ensure that search engines consider all of a site’s pages includ in the listing, even those without internal links. This makes them especially beneficial for the visibility of large websites or those with complex navigation structures.
There’s one last point to keep in mind about XML sitemaps. What is it? They can only accommodate up to 50,000 URLs , and their size must not exce 50 MB in gzip (i.e., compress) format. What should you do when this is a limitation? The best thing to do is create multiple sitemaps and organize them in an index.
HTML Sitemap
A few weeks ago, a client came to him complaining that users visiting his website could never find the pages where he promot his new products. He’s very attach to his website’s design and didn’t want to hear about the first option we offer him (modifying it). However, he lov the second option: creating an HTML sitemap .
And search engines aren’t the only ones who may ne a website map to quickly find certain content. That’s where this type of sitemap comes into play.
HTML sitemaps are , in a sense, pages within a website that contain links to all (or most) of its pages. Like XML, they are hierarchical and categoriz to better guide the user. Sometimes, the connections between pages are even shown to simplify interpretation.
HTML Sitemap Example – Source: Website ofCoca-Cola Argentina
They’re an ideal way to quickly improve the user experience , especially if standard menu navigation isn’t optimiz or if the site is too large. They can also be us, for example, to organize blog posts or guide users to specific or updat content .
This is a positive thing in more ways than one: by helping the user find what they ne, it indirectly improves SEO . A user who doesn’t get frustrat searching for a page is less likely to leave the website. And a website with a lower bounce rate (i.e., abandonment rate) is generally more likely to rank well in the SERPs .
