A sitemap isn’t anything new. It has been around since 2005, which is the time Google released the first-ever sitemap protocol. After that, MSN and Yahoo also started supporting the protocol.
Sitemaps are files of metadata about the content and pages of your website. Basic sitemaps consist of nothing more than the URLs, but particular types of sitemaps support more information like the frequency you update your website pages and their crawling priority relative to some pages on your site.
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Online users can access sitemaps, but they’re typically used by search engines to learn more about a website and its content. Search engines support some file formats for sitemaps, including plain text, RSS, and XML. Among these formats, XML is highly recommended since it provides a high customization level while being supported by major search engines.
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Depending on your preferences, you can create a sitemap using a template like Slickplan’s free content. However, since sitemaps are rarely accessed by average online users and most webmasters don’t use them, some website owners think that a sitemap is unnecessary.
Here are the top reasons why a sitemap is essential for your website:
- 1- Prevents Duplicate Content
- 2- Sitemap Is Essential For SEO
- 3- High Search Rankings For Videos And Images
- 4- Help Organize A Big Website
- 5- Get Insights From Crawling Errors
- 6- Search Engines May Add Sitelinks To Your Listings
- 7- Showcase Your Site’s Purpose
- 8- Helps Prioritize Crawling Your Website’s High-Value Pages
- 9- More Website Pages Indexed In Search Results
- 10- Get Everybody On The Same Page
- 11- Streamline Your Conversion Funnel
1- Prevents Duplicate Content
It’s a frustrating experience when you publish new content only for competitors to copy and republish it on their websites. When there are two pages that feature the same content, the search engines will index the page that published the content first. However, search engines don’t always determine the original publisher’s correct page because the competitor’s website has ranked for your content.
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Fortunately, with the use of a sitemap, you can protect your website from any possible duplicate content issues. With a sitemap, any search engine can easily crawl your website’s pages, enabling them to recognize your website as the original publisher.
Depending on the kind of sitemap you make, you can specify the original publication date of the page, which reduces the risk of content duplication.
2- Sitemap Is Essential For SEO
Once your website is developed and launched successfully, the sitemap becomes an XML sitemap. This Google protocol was made to help developers publish links from across their websites.
Every major search engine uses the same protocol. Sitemaps provide updated page information to search engines to help your website appear in the searches. However, they don’t guarantee that every link or page on your website will be crawled. In addition, note that being crawled doesn’t always guarantee an increase in search ranking or indexing.
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Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console let website owners upload a sitemap that Google can crawl. Sitemaps have replaced the old method of submitting to search engines by filling out a form on the search engines’ submission page. These days, you can directly submit a sitemap or wait for the search engines to find it on your website.
3- High Search Rankings For Videos And Images
You can encourage search engines to rank the videos and images of your website higher just by using a sitemap. In the main sitemap of your website, you may include metadata about the images of your website, like the URLs on which the photos are located, geographic location, captions, license URLs, and title.
Related: How To Check Google Rankings
For videos embedded or hosted on your website, making a separate sitemap containing metadata about your videos is a good idea. This may include a thumbnail location, description, title, duration, view count, rating, category, and more.
4- Help Organize A Big Website
Your website will grow in the long run. You can add an e-commerce store with some departments, you might expand your products, or your website could grow as new people are added to your company. However, this may confuse visitors about what you need to offer and where to go.
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A sitemap works like shopping and department store maps. It can serve as a directory for users who can’t find the pages they’re searching for on the website. It’s vital for company sites to maintain a sitemap to take stock of each page and ensure that it’s somewhere on the website.
5- Get Insights From Crawling Errors
When you give search engines your sitemap’s location, they’ll provide you with information on how they’re crawling your website. After making your sitemap, use Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console to submit the URL where it’s located. These search engines will crawl the listed URLs in your sitemap and give you a report.
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When it comes to Google Search Console, you’ll see some crawling information associated with your sitemap located under the sitemap tab. On the other hand, the crawling information in Bing Webmaster Tools is displayed below the sitemaps on the home screen. If Bing or Google can’t index a listed URL in your sitemap, the crawling problem will be included in the report.
6- Search Engines May Add Sitelinks To Your Listings
You may discover some site links appearing within the organic listings of your website on search engines like Google once you use a sitemap.
Basically, site links are the links to specific pages on your website. In other organic listings, Google shows site links below the website description to help users find relevant and useful content on the website more easily.
It’s quite impossible to specify a site link for your website because it’s an automated process that can only be performed by Google’s algorithm. However, if your website has a sitemap, you can increase the odds of getting sitelinks by guiding Google to your pages’ location.
7- Showcase Your Site’s Purpose
Since a sitemap is a content-based document, it serves as a way to define the specific value of your website. Boost this benefit by utilizing SEO to determine the most relevant and unique keywords to include on your sitemap.
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An excellent way to create keyword relevancy for pages is through anchor texts. For the pages without cross-links, sitemaps are a simple alternative to use your preferred anchor text.
8- Helps Prioritize Crawling Your Website’s High-Value Pages
If you don’t have a sitemap, there’s no way you can control how frequently the search engines would crawl your website’s specific pages.
As a solution, use a sitemap to resolve it with the priority attribute. Once you create a sitemap, you can easily assign a crawling priority value to web pages. For instance, you can set a 100% priority value for your homepage while giving an 80% priority value to your category pages. With this, you can be sure that search engines will crawl all your pages, especially the most important ones.
9- More Website Pages Indexed In Search Results
Having a sitemap can result in having your website’s pages being indexed in the search engine results. Note that search engines crawl sitemaps like some website files using the URLs listed to discover new content pages.
Related: Make Google Index Your Site (FASTER)
If Bing or Google discovers a URL that isn’t indexed in their search results, they would add it. Sitemaps don’t guarantee high search rankings, but they may encourage search engines to index most of your pages.
10- Get Everybody On The Same Page
Websites are often built by a team of professionals, including a project manager, designer, content creator, copywriter, and developer. There’s also somebody involved to do the sales or marketing aspects of the website. For this reason, you must have a sitemap as it ensures that every person involved in the website is on the same page.
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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.
A sitemap isn’t a static document and can be changed as the project progresses. The sitemap can also serve as a central clearinghouse to track a project, assess what still requires improvement, check what’s done, and inspect what progress is made.
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.
11- Streamline Your Conversion Funnel
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. Try one after you drafted a sitemap to ensure you’re not adding more steps anywhere.
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.
Conclusion
With the ability to provide search engines with the metadata they require about your website’s content, sitemaps become an invaluable SEO tool. 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.
