A Brief Look at XML Sitemaps
A sitemap is a list of all pages and links for a website, which crawlers use for online ranking purposes. It’s essentially an index that tells Google what each page on your website is about and when it was last updated. Creating a sitemap is one of the most important aspects of web design and development.
Why Create One?
Having a sitemap isn’t completely necessary, and web pages can still be ranked without it. However, adding this index to your website helps determine which pages are most relevant to searchers. Sitemaps are also helpful if:
- Your pages don’t have internal links to attract the attention of search engine crawlers
- You’ve recently created a new site that does not have a lot of internal or external links
- You have multiple versions of your website or its pages
Creating a Sitemap
You can create either an HTML sitemap, which is a list of links, or an XML sitemap, which is not visible to users. An XML sitemap is better if you have a large website. You don’t need to create these two different sitemaps, and having only one of them would be fine.
If you have a WordPress site, you can use either the Yoast SEO plugin or the Google XML Sitemaps plugin. You can also make a sitemap manually if you only have one or two web pages. After you get your sitemap ready, submit it to Google. Just remember to update it when you make changes to your site, such as:
- Deleting or adding pages
- Making significant changes to your website content
- Adding new elements to your pages (HTML, plugins, videos, or images)
Sitemaps are important because search engine crawlers have a lot of data to go through when determining the rank for a website. If you need a responsive website with a proper sitemap for your business, turn to Saba SEO. As one of the leading San Diego web development companies, we use a variety of tools to create high-quality sitemaps that can result in more traffic for your website. Whether your business website needs a few fixes or a complete revamp, give us a call at 858-951-1717 today.