XML Sitemap: A Double-Edged Sword for Your Online Growth

 The XML sitemap is a roadmap of your website that allows search engine crawlers access all the important pages. An XML sitemap can be good for SEO, as they allow Google to access essential site pages quickly- even with poor internal linking.

Site owners want search engine crawlers to visit each page of the website; however, some pages may end up without any internal links, making it tough to find. Here's where XML sitemap has its significance. It lists the website's important pages allowing crawlers to find them all.

SEO and XML Sitemap

Imagine your website as a house and each page of your site as a room, XML Sitemap is a blueprint of your house, allowing Google, hassle-free access to all the room of your house. XML Sitemaps is essential as they make it easier for Google to find your site's pages. Remember, Google ranks pages and not just websites.

XML Sitemaps are essential if

  • The site is not well-structures or link properly
  • Either the site is new or has few external links
  • The site is large and runs lots of archived content which are not lined up correctly

Adding Sitemap to Your Site

Before you add a sitemap, make sure you check if you already have it or not. If you don't, you can always design one.

Sitemap for Custom Made Website

In the custom made site, you may need the help of a developer. Meanwhile, you can always generate a static XML sitemap and upload it to your server. If you have plenty of time, you can even write one. However, a static sitemap means you need to generate one constantly every time you add a new page to the website.

If you want it for free, you can generate a sitemap with https.//www.xml-sitemaps.com/.The tool crawls your website and structure the information it finds about the URLs in an XML file which you can later download to your network.

Sitemap For CMS

Most popular sites like WordPress can solve your issue by simply installing a Sitemap plugin. Yoast SEO is another most popular platform which generates an SEO sitemap on its own. There is similar extension for other platforms like Drupal, Joomla or Magneto. For more details, you can speak to our executive managers at V1 Technologies.

Optimizing Your Sitemap for SEO

Once you have a sitemap its time to make its beneficial use. Also, sitemaps can create trouble if you do the wrong way. Therefore, a good way is to check Sitemap for Errors in Google Search Console. But before you do that, check it with a proper set of SEO tools. Once you upload it to Google it will immensely impact the website.

Pages For Your XML Sitemap

Think of a relevant URL, would you want the visitor to land on a particular URL, if yes you need to add it. Google will find it and index the URL.

• Blogs

If you have created a new blog to target your audience, it's a good idea to create an XML sitemap right from the beginning. You might equally create a handful of posts and categories and add some tags while you start.

• Media & Images

For most of the websites, media or image XML sitemap is not essential. Your images are used within the pages and posts and are already included in 'post' or 'page' sitemap. The only exception is if images are the primary source of your business.

Check Your XML Sitemap

You must have understood the significance of an XML sitemap. Having one helps your SEO and online presence. Search engines like Google can now swiftly access pages and posts as you add the right URLs.