Why are sitemaps added to websites

It helps Google bots crawl your website faster and more efficiently. Sitemaps tell Google which pages you think are essential. While the two formats of sitemaps have similar functions, there are some major differences between the two. XML sitemaps list all your web pages, so Google can crawl and index. If some pages on your website are not linked, then sitemaps can speed up the process of finding these links and fixing the problem.

XML sitemaps can indicate when a file or webpage is updated. Google loves it when you update and refresh content, so having this data available is helpful. You can see older content and choose to take it off the sitemap or refresh it. If you have a large website, you may need multiple XML files to cover it.

Google says that sitemaps are suitable for large websites, websites with extensive archives, new websites with not too many links, and websites with rich media content websites.

Check out our guide to creating an XML sitemap to get started with creating your own. Google can still find the page if there are links pointing to it, but it will be a slower process. Despite our best intentions, things can go wrong when setting up our sitemaps. Websites are often built by a team of professionals, including a project manager, designer, content creator, copywriter, and developer.

For this reason, you must have a sitemap as it ensures that every person involved in the website is on the same page. Your sitemap must be kept in a format accessible to everybody working on the project and must be kept in the central location where everyone can view or make necessary changes. Getting everybody on the same page is beneficial when designing a website. It also reveals an essential secret on how your business operates.

Having everybody in your company align with the mission statement, core values, and high-level goals can lead to a high chance of start-up success. When it comes to conversion funnel or digital marketing funnels , you might want to take a minimum number of steps only. The reason behind it is that the more steps you implement, the more chances visitors will leave your website without signing up or completing their purchase.

A sitemap may come in handy to determine the necessary steps to include in your conversion funnel. Having a visual representation can help streamline your funnel much easier. You can use solid product analytics to understand your conversion funnels. Set up software for conversion funnel prior to launching the website to determine or assess the most ideal selling and sign-up processes. The sooner you track your conversion funnels accurately, the more revenues you could earn.

It also encourages search engines to index more of your pages, prioritizes crawling, and protects against duplicate content.

So, get started with creating a sitemap for your website and see the difference. Joydeep Bhattacharya is a digital marketing evangelist who has over 11 years of experience in online marketing. He helps businesses improve their revenue online.

Prev Article Next Article. Related Posts. If no website links to your new blog posts, a sitemap can help search engines quickly discover new pages on your site. Sitemaps can be also used to hide pages from users while still letting search engines crawl them. JohnMu August 17, In any way, adding a sitemap to your website will not do any harm. First, check if you already have a sitemap! The files could also have the. The difficulty really depends on what type of platform your website is built on.

Of course, you can just generate a static XML sitemap and upload it to your server. You could even write one yourself, but that would take forever! However, a static sitemap means you would constantly have to generate it every time you add a new page to your website in order for it to be effective.

The developers would have to write some code. The process is pretty straight forward. However, this has its flaws. However, the best option is probably the PHP version, which you can plug into your website and run directly from your website. You can solve your issue by installing a Sitemap plugin. While Google says a sitemap will never get you in trouble, it actually can, if you do it the wrong way.

For example, you might highlight some duplicate content pages which we know cause at least a little bit of issues. Once you upload it to Google, it will have an impact on your site, be it positive or negative. Once you set up your campaign and run the Site Audit, the tool will crawl your entire site and analyze it for errors.

The tool will first highlight the discrepancy between the found page which the tool was able to crawl, just as Google would and the pages listed in the sitemap. You might do this on purpose, if you want to exclude certain pages. Secondly, you want to fix any duplicate and thin content issues on your website. You can do this easily with the Site Audit. So make sure you exclude those pages from the Sitemap. Even better, you can fix your issues by canonicalizing the duplicates and adding content to your thin pages.

Consider adding the most important pages first. Once you finish creating and optimizing your sitemap, you can finally add it to the Google Search Console and validate it.

There you can also view any previously submitted sitemaps. The Search Console will let you know if there are any issues, such as duplicate content ones.

Have they ever helped you rank better? Have you ever fixed any sitemap related issues and ranked better after? Let us know in the comments section. Awesome post about how important these are. Some time ago trying to make the best SEO, thinking that sitemap was not so important, now it is understood how the pages were not found or positioned, thanks for tremendous information.

Very clear and informative guide. I could be even better if you make case study on how to create and submit HTML sitemap properly. Click here to cancel reply.