The CMS has created a website for you, but many factors need consideration for SEO. Here are five steps to create a sitemap and make your site easy for search engines like Google and Bing to crawl. A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on your website. This allows search engines to find and index your content easily. A sitemap can also be used to help you plan how to improve your website’s design. When getting your website to rank, you should use as many SEO techniques as feasible. Creating a sitemap is a method that will undoubtedly aid in the enhancement of your SEO approach. Use the SEO All-in-One Plugin to generate your sitemap quickly and easily if you’re a WordPress user. It will construct your sitemap and much more for your WordPress site automatically.
What is a sitemap, exactly?
Some of you may know more about it than others. So before I teach you how to create a website sitemap on your own, I’ll give you a brief crash course on sitemap essentials. A sitemap, often known as an XML sitemap, is a list of all the pages on a website. The term “extensible markup language” refers to a method of displaying data on a website. Because sitemaps are considered a technical component of SEO, I’ve worked with many website owners who are scared by the notion. In truth, creating a sitemap does not need a computer expert or technical experience. It’s not that tough, as you’ll soon discover.
What is the purpose of a sitemap?
Google and other search engines are dedicated to providing the best relevant results for each given search query. They employ site crawlers to scan, arrange, and index content on the Internet to accomplish this. Search engine crawlers can read the material on your site and index the pages more easily using XML sitemaps. As a consequence, you’ll have a better chance of improving your website’s SEO rating. Your sitemap will inform search engines where a page on your website is located, when it was last updated, how often it is updated, and how important the page is about other pages on your site. Google crawlers can assume your site contains duplicate material if you don’t have a sitemap, which would affect your SEO rating.
Steps to establishing a sitemap for your website:
Step 1: Examine the layout of your pages.
The first step is to examine the current material on your website and determine how it is organized. Next, examine a sitemap template and consider how your pages appear on the table.
This is a simple example that anybody may follow. It all begins with the home page. Then it would help if you considered where your homepage hyperlinks are. Based on your website’s menu selections, you’ve probably already found this out. However, not all pages are made equal when it comes to SEO. When you’re doing this, bear in mind the depth of your website. Recognize that pages located farther from your site’s homepage will be more difficult to rank for. According to Search Engine Journal, you should strive for a shallow depth sitemap, which means it takes just three clicks to access any page on your website. That’s a lot better in terms of SEO. As a result, you’ll need to organize your pages into a hierarchy depending on their relevance and how you want them to be indexed. Create a logical structure for your material by dividing it into tiers. To demonstrate what I’m talking about, consider the following example.
As you can see, the About page links to Our Team and Mission & Values. Then the Our Team page links to Management and Contact Us. The most significant page is About Us, which is why it’s on the top-level menu. Because it wouldn’t make sense to prioritize the administration page alongside Products, Pricing, and Blogs, it’s categorized as third-level content. Likewise, the logical organization would be thrown out of wack if the Basic price package was placed atop the Compare Packages page. So, to decide the arrangement of your pages, utilize these visual sitemap templates. Some of you may already have a framework in place that makes sense but may need a few tweaks. Remember to set it up such that every page can be accessed in three clicks.
Step 2: Make your URLs unique.
It’s time to code those URLs now that you’ve defined the relevance of each page and matched that importance in your site structure. This may be accomplished by using XML elements to format each URL. If you have any HTML code knowledge, this will be a snap for you. As I previously said, “ML” stands for the markup language, the same as HTML. It’s not difficult to figure out, even if you’ve never done anything like this before. Begin by downloading a text editor that allows you to build an XML file. Sublime Text is a fantastic alternative to think about.
Then, for each URL, add the appropriate code.
- location
- last modified
- frequency has shifted
- the importance of the page
Here are some samples of how each one’s code will appear.
- http://www.examplesite.com/page1
- 2019-1-10
- weekly
- 2
Take your time and make sure you understand everything. When it comes to inserting this code, the text editor makes your life a lot simpler, but it still demands you to be smart.
Step 3: Check the code for errors.
Human mistake is always a possibility when coding by hand. However, any code errors in your sitemap will prevent it from working correctly. Fortunately, there are tools available to assist you in validating your code and ensuring proper syntax. There is software accessible on the internet to assist you with this. You may discover something by doing a fast Google search for sitemap validation. The XML Sitemap Validator tool is one of my favorites.
This will highlight any mistakes in your code. If you neglect to include an end-tag or anything similar, for example, it may be immediately discovered and corrected.
Step 4: Place your sitemap and robots.txt files in the root directory.
Locate your website’s root folder and upload the sitemap file there. By doing so, the page will be added to your site. This isn’t an issue in the least. In reality, this can be found on a variety of websites. Enter a website’s URL and add “/sitemap/” to the end to see the results. Take a look at this sample from the Apple website.
Take note of each section’s structure and logical hierarchy. This pertains to what we spoke about in the previous phase. This may now be taken to the next level. By adding “/sitemap.xml” to the URL, you may look at the code on multiple websites. For example, on the HubSpot website, it looks like this.
You’ll want to include the sitemap file in the robots.txt file in addition to the root folder. This may also be found in the roots folder. This is essentially a set of instructions for any crawlers crawling your website. The robots.txt folder may be used for a variety of purposes. For example, when search engines scan your site, you may use this to display URLs that you don’t want them to index. So, let’s return to Apple and have a peek at their robots.txt file.
They have “disallow” for various pages on their site, as you can see. As a result, crawlers disregard them.
On the other hand, Apple provides its sitemap files here as well. If you ask everyone, they won’t advise you to include your sitemaps in the robots.txt file. So I’ll leave it up to you to decide. With that stated, I’m a big believer in adopting successful websites’ and companies’ best practices. If a company as large as Apple employs it, it can’t be a terrible idea for you to consider.
Step 5: Send your sitemap in.
It’s time to submit your sitemap to search engines now that it’s been built and included in your site files. You’ll need to use Google Search Console to do this. This may already be in place for some of you. If you haven’t already, you can get started right now. Once you’re on the search console dashboard, navigate to Crawl > Sitemaps.
Then, in the upper right corner of the screen, select Add/Test Sitemap. This is an opportunity for you to double-check your sitemap for any problems before proceeding. Obviously, you’ll want to correct any errors you find. Once your sitemap is error-free, click submit, and you’re done. Google will handle everything else from here. Crawlers will now have an easier time indexing your site, which will improve your SEO ranking.
Alternative possibilities
While these five procedures are quite basic and obvious, some of you may be hesitant to directly change the code on your website. This is very understandable. Fortunately, various options can generate a sitemap for you without requiring you to modify any code. I’ll go through some of the best possibilities for you to think about.
SEO All-in-One Plugin
If you have a WordPress website, you can install the SEO All-in-One Plugin to create a sitemap for your website. Then, with a simple toggle switch, AIOS allows you to turn your sitemap on and off.
A shrieking frog
a shrieking frog is desktop software that offers a wide range of SEO tools. It’s free to use and generate a sitemap if the website has fewer than 500 pages. You’ll need to upgrade to the paid version for those of you with larger websites.
A shrieking frog allows you to make all the coding changes we talked about earlier without actually changing the code yourself. Instead, you follow a prompt that’s much more user-friendly and written in plain English. Then the code for the sitemap file will be changed automatically. Here’s a screenshot to show you what I mean.
Edit your options in the tabs, and the sitemap file will be updated appropriately.
Slickplan
Slickplan’s visual sitemap builder is one of my favorite features. You’ll be able to utilize a sitemap template similar to the ones we discussed before. To manage the structure of your website, drag and drop various pages into the template from here. Once you’ve finished and are satisfied with the appearance of your visual sitemap, you may save it as an XML file. Slickplan is a premium program. However, there is a free trial available. If you’re on the fence about buying a plan, it’s at least worth a shot.
Conclusion
Create a sitemap for your website if you’re ready to take your SEO strategy to the next level. There’s no cause to be afraid of it anymore. As you can see from this instruction, creating a sitemap is simple and only takes five steps.
- Examine your pages.
- The URLs should be coded.
- Check your code for errors.
- Place the sitemap and robots.txt files in the root directory.
- Please provide the sitemap.
That concludes our discussion. For those of you who are still on the fence about manually changing code on your website, there are other options for you to consider. Of course, the Internet is full of sitemap resources, but the Yoast plugin, a shrieking frog, and Slickplan are all great choices to start.
Related Tags
- sitemap generator
- the free website mapping tool
- sitemap example HTML
- how to create an XML sitemap
- google sitemap