Importance of a Sitemap
What is a sitemap?
A sitemap is a file that list all the webpages on your website. Sitemaps can be divided into two categories. Sitemap for crawlers and the sitemap for visitors.
Sitemap for visitors (html sitemaps)
Sitemap for visitors/html sitemap is a page that allows visitors to see the layout of your pages and posts in one location. Some of these sitemaps include all pages, but you can limit it to just your top level pages. Excerpt from each page can also be included in the visual sitemap, giving your visitors an idea of the content contained on each of the page.
An added bonus to a html sitemap is that is allows for all the pages you add to the sitemap to have internal links to each of your pages, making it easier for spiders and crawlers to see associations with your content.
Sitemap for crawlers (xml sitemaps)
Sitemaps for crawlers/xml sitemap are files created to tell search engines, like Google and Bing, about the pages on your website and how they are organized. Crawlers are able to read these files and crawl your site thoroughly. These sitemaps can contain valuable metadata associated with your site’s pages. Metadata allows the bot to know information like when the page was last updated, how often each page is updated and the importance of the page relative to other pages on your site. Metadata can also be used to give information about specific types of content on your pages, including mobile view, images, and video. These types of sitemaps are intended to be submitted to the search engines through google search engine console or analytics account. These type of sitemaps are limited to 10MB and 50,000urls. If you have a site larger than this, you can break your sitemap up into smaller files and include a sitemap index file with your submission of the sitemap to search engines.
Why you need a sitemap?
Sitemaps are not required but are highly recommended for all websites. A sitemap allows the crawlers of your site to get to all areas of your website no matter the size. This helps with Search Engine Optimization because it makes it easier for search engines to find all the content on your website. Sitemaps are especially important for new websites, very large sites, or sites with large archives. For new websites, there are very few external links coming into your site, so crawlers may have a hard time finding all of the pages on your site. Having a sitemap for the website will eliminate such problems.
Benefits of having a sitemap
XML sitemaps help search engines understand what you would like to index on your website and prioritize the crawling process. If your site has a deep directory structure, a sitemap will act like a guide for search engines so they don’t miss valuable content. If it’s a brand new site, adding a sitemap will be a good way to let search robots and the whole world know about it and index it accordingly. Sitemaps help you control indexing of certain pages in Google Search Console. An XML sitemap is your legal helper in confirming your content rights as it mentions the page publication and update time.