Many times, you have seen an option at the bottom of many websites in which it is written Sitemap. You might have a question about what this Sitemap is. In today’s article, we are going to tell you what a Sitemap is and how to make it.
Until some time ago, there was an option for Sitemap on the home page of many government websites. Till some time ago, HTML was also used for Sitemap, but as time and technology have changed, Sitemaps are now shown in XML on many websites.
What is a Sitemap?
In fact, Sitemap is a list of all the pages on any website; if we have not included the page of your website or blog in Sitemap, then no one can see those pages by going to Google’s search engine. Sitemaps are very important for every website or blog because, by this, any search engine gets information about the page available on your website or blog.
Apart from all this, Sitemap also provides information about the content on the blog or website you have created and how often you update the blog or website. Keeping these things in mind, only your blog appears in any search result.
Sitemap Types
By now, we have come to know what a Sitemap is. Now we will get to know how many types of Sitemaps are there.
There are mainly two types of Sitemaps
- XML Sitemap
- HTML Sitemap
Now, it becomes very important to know here that XML Sitemap also has two parts.
- URL Sitemap
- Index Sitemap
After this, we have to understand that URL Sitemap also has three parts
- Video Sitemap
- Sitemap for Webpages
- Image Sitemap
What is an XML Sitemap?
XML is generally a language in which all information associated with that website is stored in a well-planned format. It is very difficult for us to understand XML, but this is not the case with search engines. All search engines understand XML very easily. In simple language, we can also say that XML Sitemap is designed for search engines only, by which the search engine gets information about all the website’s internal and external resources.
What is an HTML Sitemap?
As the name suggests, a Sitemap is like a map of any website. The HTML Sitemap contains information about the website as well as its location. With the help of HTML Sitemap, one can get information related to the website very easily. Just think that, on any website, there are many web pages, and it is not easy for anyone to find the exact information from it, but with the help of Sitemap, it becomes very easy.
Why is XML Sitemap Needed?
If you look from an SEO point of view, Sitemap is very important for every kind of website or blog, & nbsp. Although no ranking improves in the search engine of any website or blog due to Sitemap, if your web pages are not indexed yet, they get indexed through Sitemap.
Whenever you upload a new blog or article, there are not many backlinks in that blog, which is why they are not visible in the blog search engine. However, because of XML Sitemap, your blog or website gets indexed. After this, any search engine can easily crawl those websites.
How Do Search Engines Find Any Sitemap?
By now, we have come to know that sitemaps are the lifeblood of any website, and this is how search engines display your website. Now, we will try to learn how a search engine finds a sitemap.
Search engines are technically advanced. Whenever we post any new blog or article through ping, the search engine gets information that there is some change in the Sitemap of the website.
How to Make a Sitemap?
XML Sitemap also contains metadata, and these are the biggest advantages of XML Sitemap, due to which we can also provide additional information in the content of any web page. So let’s now know how to create an XML Sitemap
● First of all, you have to create a text file, which will be renamed Sitemap, and save it in .xml format.
● After this, we have to use the script below to let the search engine know how the Sitemap is encoded.
- <?xml version=” 1.0″ encoding=” UTF-8″?>
- <urlset xmlns=”http://sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″>
- </urlset>
● Now, we have to add all the URLs on the website.
- <url>
- <loc>http://www.website.com/</loc>
- <lastmod>2021-01-01</lastmod>
- <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
- <priority>1</priority>
- </url>
You should add your URL to the tags mentioned above. The last model that is written after that means that the last time you modified your page. After that, there is changefreq, which means in what interval do you change your page, such as Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, etc?
If your URLs have been archived, then use never in frequency. After that the next steps are those of priority, it depends on you in which category you want to put your page. Here, 1 means more important. Its range is from 0.0 to 1.0, while by default is 0.5.
● After creating a Sitemap, you have to upload it to your website and should only add it by going to the Root Directory.
What Should You Keep in Mind When Creating a Sitemap?
When you are creating a Sitemap, you must keep some things in mind; let’s know what those things are.
● The maximum length of any URL you create must be up to 2048 characters.
● You can only have up to 50,000 URLs in one Sitemap.
● You also have to keep in mind that all URLs must be from the same host as the Sitemap.
● You can keep the maximum file size of any Sitemap up to 50 MB only.
