How to Create a Sitemap

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There are many ways to improve your website, both for users and for search engines, so that your content can be found and your website more easily navigated. One of those methods is to create a sitemapA site map is a list of pages on your site and their relative importance. Use sitemaps to make it easier for visitors to find what they're looking for, and to ensure that search engines can find all the information they need.. However, the word sitemap can cause confusion. If you’re unsure how a sitemap can improve your website’s chances, or if you’re unsure as to what a sitemap is, this guide can help answer all of your questions.

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What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap for a website has all the pages and their child pages nestled underneath each other, meaning that when search engine algorithms like Google parse your website, they will have a map and a means to access all the pages easily.

Why Do You Need a Sitemap?

A sitemap is an XML file that is useful for many reasons, most notably it is useful for improving your on-site SEO. The reason why this is important is that Google does not rank your website as a whole, it ranks individual pages. It is for this reason why an article might end up in the number one spot on Google’s SERPs, but your home page might not. Furthermore, a sitemap is automatically generated and updated, meaning that if you publish content regularly, this can help Google stay up to date with what you have.

Sitemaps are also important if your website:

Has pages created
Has structural issues, meaning it is not as user-friendly as it needs to be.
Has few internal linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. to help Google find all of your pages.
Has few external links.
Has recently gone live.
Has a lot of archived content that is not well-linked internally.

It is important to note that while a sitemap can help Google’s algorithms rank your website, you should also commit to improving your website every day. Conduct regular SEO audits to ensure your website is as well-structured and simple to use as possible, because this will greatly impact your SERP ranking.

How to Create a Sitemap Today

Thankfully, some content management systems (CMS) have the ability to automatically create a sitemap for you, like WordPress. Creating a sitemap can be done by downloading the YOAST SEO plugin, or a similar plugin, from the WordPress directory.

Once this is installed, you will then need to turn on the XML sitemap capability, which can be found under the SEO > XML Sitemaps. This, in turn, will provide you with several options to help you customise your sitemap based on your needs, but if you are unsure of what they mean or what you need, it is best to leave them at default and to then save your settings. Once done, you will have an automatically generated sitemap on your page.

Tell Search Engines About Your Site Map

Your next step should be to submit your sitemap to Google’s Webmaster tools. This is useful not only to speed up the process, but to also check for any errors in your sitemap and provide you with other key information relevant to you as a webmaster.

Sitemaps are important to help search engines find and correctly index all of your pages, which is important whether you are a new or established website on the Internet. Not only are they useful for the search engines, but they can also be used to better your website’s flow and functionality, and should be created as soon as possible.