If you’re in the process of building a website, you’ve likely heard of something called a sitemap. In this article, we will explain what it is, why you need one, and how to create one if you don’t already have one running on your website.
The Meandering History of the Sitemap
Over the years, the term sitemap has changed meanings a few times as websites and technology evolved. However, they all provide a similar function, which is to list all of your pages in one file. Going back 10-plus years, a sitemap was an intentional, styled page on the website. A page with clickable links to every URL in the website. This was only prevalent on sites with challenging menus or older website technology that wasn’t compatible with early browsers, cell phones, or early search engines. Technologies like Macromedia Flash and early JavaScript were being used to build menus with fancy animations and flyouts. Unfortunately, search engines couldn’t ‘see’ the URLs so a simple sitemap was created which the crawlers could see just fine. Thankfully, those sitemaps didn’t last much longer as websites became smarter and increasingly user-friendly and accessible.
Sitemap is also used by website development agencies to describe a basic website page structure during the planning stage of a new website build. Also called a website architecture, it’s a high-level draft of the main, top-level pages of a website; the foundation. This type of sitemap is an essential part of planning a new website and is part of every new Caorda designed and developed website.
However, when you hear the term sitemap these days, it’s almost always referring to the Extensible Markup Language (XML) file that search engines like Google and Bing can use to learn more about your website structure and page inventory. That’s the file that we’ll be digging into in this article.
What is a Sitemap?
As we mentioned earlier, there are different kinds of sitemaps, however, nine times out of 10, we mean the XML sitemap that lists all of the URLs on your website that can help the search engines when crawling your site.
Unlike the first-generation sitemaps, the XML sitemap is not designed for people; it’s exclusively provided to search engines. These XML sitemaps can be split into various categories of media. For instance, a video or image sitemap would be a good idea if you have lots of media on your website. A news sitemap would be most useful for websites with a blog that wants to be featured on Google News.
The XML sitemap is a very important tool and every website can benefit from it. But why are they so important?
Why Do You Need a Sitemap?
In order to be indexed in search engines like Google, the search engines need to be able to crawl your website and read the URLs in your links and menus. Search engines will crawl your site regardless of whether you have a sitemap or not, but the presence of a sitemap allows the search engine to crawl your site far more thoroughly and efficiently, especially if you have a really large website.
The two main benefits of having a sitemap are better discoverability and indexing. Discoverability means the various pages on your website become easier to find by users and search engines. The sitemap greatly increases the number of pages on your website that become discoverable – especially if your website is extensive. Indexing refers to ranking in the search engines. It’s far easier to rank well in Google if it can find and learn about the pages on your site.
A sitemap may not be completely necessary for all websites, and it’s important to remember that simply having an XML sitemap doesn’t affect your ranking. It’s simply a tool that provides improved discoverability. Still, there are certainly a handful of scenarios where a sitemap can benefit a website.
- Your website was just built. If your website is brand new, there won’t be much historical value or site reputation available to index your pages in search engines. The sitemap will allow the Search Engines to see every page in your website much faster than if it relied on what it could find during a website crawl.
- Your website is large. Large websites with lots of pages make it harder for search engines to crawl and discover every nook and cranny of the website. They’re bound to miss things without a sitemap.
- Your website has lots of media. If you want your images and videos to rank in search engines, it will help to have specially designed image and video sitemaps that help search engines find and understand the content.
- Your website navigation is a mess. If your website has very outdated menus or website technology and you have important pages that are buried with no easy path to find them, search engines and your visitors will have trouble finding them. Inefficient internal linking is a ranking factor, so simply dropping in a sitemap won’t help with ranking. You want to re-imagine your website navigation an/or site architecture as soon as possible.
Finding Your Sitemap
So, how do you know if your website has a sitemap? The easiest way to look for a sitemap is to locate it manually, and there are a couple of ways to do this.
1. Try to find the URL address. The most common name for XML sitemaps is ‘sitemap.xml’. Go to your website and type /sitemap.xml at the end, like this: https://www.caorda.com/sitemap.xml. If you get something besides a Page Not Found error, it’s likely that you’ve found your sitemap file, or files.
2. Use search operators in Google. Search for the XML file type or the word ‘sitemap’ in the URLs of your indexed pages. This is done by typing “site: yourwebsite.com” along with “filetype:xml” or “inurl:sitemap”. That would like something like this:
3. Check Google Search Console. If you’ve set up Google Search Console and can log in and see your reports, you’ll be able to view a range of diagnostic data including sitemap info. Under the ‘submitted sitemaps’ section, you’ll see if you have one or not.
How to Make a Sitemap
So you looked around and didn’t find a sitemap, huh? The best way to go about it is to let your Content Management System (CMS) do the heavy lifting. If you’re using WordPress, you’ll hardly need to lift a finger. Simply install the Yoast SEO plugin and enable dynamic sitemaps. The dynamic sitemap is a huge advantage because as you edit your website, your sitemap will also update automatically, saving plenty of hours of constant updating. Alternatively, if you’d rather not use Yoast, Google’s XML Sitemap Generator plug-in works great.
Most CMS platforms will have sitemaps automatically built in, so you won’t need to do much to enable them or submit them. It should all happen automatically. Worst case, if you aren’t using a CMS with tons of plug-in options like WordPress, there are third-party sitemap-generating tools out there that can easily deliver an XML file sitemap. Here are a few:
Submitting Your Sitemap
To submit your sitemap to Google, you’ll need to log in to your Google Search Console account. If you have never logged in or created an account, the process is simple. You can verify your ownership of the website in a few different ways. If you have access to your Google Analytics account and property for your website, you can verify that way. Or you can simply input a piece of code into your website to confirm to Google that you’re the owner.
Oh, don’t forget about Bing! Bing also has a ‘webmaster tools’ section where you can submit a sitemap for some additional diagnostics.
Once you’ve set up your Google Search Console account, you’ll have the ability to manually add a sitemap(s). On the left-hand side of the screen (just like in the screenshot a little ways up) will be a menu. In that menu, look for ‘Sitemaps’, which will bring up a list of your submitted sitemaps. To add a new sitemap, just paste the sitemap file’s URL into the field under ‘Add a new sitemap’ and click the submit button.
Once Google has crawled your sitemap, the status of your submitted sitemap will change to ‘success’ if everything has been done right. If the status reads something other than ‘success’, your sitemap will need some attention.
Want some professional help? Caorda’s website development team has extensive experience building websites and fixing tricky backend issues. Plus, we’ve got talented marketers, SEO experts, support crew, and designers all under one roof to help you with all aspects of your digital presence. Contact Caorda today for a quote on your website project: