Every webmaster and SEO specialist must understand what sitemaps are and why there are different types of them. The most important aspect of an SEO strategy is to have a well-constructed sitemap that allows search engines to better crawl and index your site. In this guide, you will learn what sitemaps are and the different types available in order to improve your site visibility and search engine ranking.
What is a Sitemap?
A sitemap can be any kind of document where you describe pages, videos, or other files using metadata. This file lets Google know more about crawling on your site. It has two purposes for example indicating the importance of some pages on your website to the search engine as well as giving them other details such as when they were last modified, how often they change among others.
Why is a Sitemap Important?
Sitemaps become necessary for websites with:
1. Larger archives: Websites grow over time hence making it hard to find old content. The use of sitemaps ensures that nothing gets lost right from the bottom-most part of its structure.
2. New websites: Such sites usually do not have much external links therefore their content cannot easily be found by search engines.
3. Rich media content: An image sitemap could also make sense if you had video or image files embedded within your website.
4. Dynamically generated pages: For them having an up-to-date map may help them get indexed faster due to high rate at which new content is created.
Types of Sitemaps
There exist numerous kinds of sitemaps meant for various purposes. You should thus familiarize yourself with each type so that you can effectively apply them:
XML Sitemap
This type of map is commonly used by search engines when they want to crawl through a website. The XML maps include all possible URL in the site together with extra information for each URL like when it was last modified, its change frequency and priority.
HTML Sitemap
HTML sitemaps are different from XML sitemaps which are made for search engines. This is a one-page document that gives a bird’s eye view of the structure of your website and allows visitors to navigate easily. Some sections within the website are shown as Sectioned navigation on this HTML document.
Image Sitemap
A site map with images will provide more details about pictures hosted on your web pages. For web image search results many websites want their images to appear in results hence an image sitemap can be useful.
Video Sitemap
This one is much like an image map except that it is meant for video content found in the webpage. An example could be where you would want your videos to show up in video search results so there might fields such as; Video Title, Video Description, Play page url, Duration, Preview Thumbnail url among others.
News Sitemap
There are certain times when news sites or other facilities post contents that need updating frequently hence necessitating a news sitemap. This makes it easier for Google News surfaces to find new content eligible for display and thereby ensures greater visibility among people who constantly follow events happening from day-to-day.
How to Create a Sitemap
There are various platforms that, depending on which one your website is built with, may need you to create a sitemap. Creating a site map can be done automatically by plugins such as WordPress and other CMSs.
Another way is to make a simple text files for your Sitemaps so that you can upload them once you finish.
Submitting Sitemap to the Search Engine
Once the website’s map has been made, it needs to be sent to Google Search Console or any other search engine webmaster tools. This is because it helps inform search engines about its presence and provide some control over how often they crawl and optimize it.
Maintaining Your Sitemap
It is important to maintain your sitemap. You should update your site map whenever new content gets published or existing pages get changed because of expansions. Updating on a regular basis ensures that all contents, including new pages are indexed by search engines.
To conclude, through these means, you can design a website that is easy for search engines like Google or Yahoo! To find and read its contents better than before- hence making use of various kinds of XML Site Maps in order o boost visibility as well as SEO rankings in general for any given webpage.
Read More at: SEO Expert in Chandigarh and SEO Services in Chandigarh
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