Introduction
Many SEO experts debate whether or not to use a sitemap. Some think it’s unnecessary, while others believe it’s essential for every website. The simple answer is that sitemaps are always beneficial. You won’t be penalised for having one, but not having one could create issues. So, it’s a good idea to create a sitemap if you haven’t already. Before diving into best practices for sitemaps to boost SEO, let’s first understand what sitemaps are and why they’re important.
What Is A Sitemap?
A sitemap is like a road map for your website. It helps search engines like Google find all the pages on your website. By creating a sitemap, you can tell search engines which pages are most important and when you last updated them. This helps search engines find and show your website to people who are looking for information related to your topic.
Importance Of Sitemaps For SEO
Sitemaps help search engines navigate and understand your site, making it easier for them to rank your pages for relevant search queries. This can boost your website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), increasing visibility and attracting more traffic from your target audience. Sitemaps also benefit users by showing them top websites that match their search, and you want your site to be among those results.
7 Easy Sitemap Best Practices To Adhere To
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Make Your Pages A Priority
By prioritising your pages in a sitemap, you can drive more traffic to the most valuable ones. Google’s sitemap protocol lets you rank pages from 0.1 to 1, and search engines will check higher-rated pages more often. This helps them track updates and changes, especially on dynamic pages you frequently update, like blogs or posts. Pages that rarely change, like privacy policies, should be given a lower rating. Avoid rating all pages high, as it can harm your SEO if static pages, like your login or about us, are crawled too often.
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Make Sitemaps That Are Dynamic
A dynamic sitemap is like a map that automatically updates itself. Instead of manually changing the map every time you make changes to your website, a dynamic sitemap uses rules to keep itself up-to-date. This saves you time and ensures that search engines always have the most accurate information about your website.
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Employ A Sitemap Generator
Website developers often use sitemap tools and generators to make the process easier, especially if they aren’t familiar with coding. Once the sitemap is created, it needs to be submitted to Google Search Console. This can be done by clicking the “sitemaps” button on the dashboard, pasting the sitemap URL, and hitting submit. You can monitor your submitted sitemaps in the “Sitemaps Added” section.
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Sort Your Content Into Categories
Typically, websites include a homepage, categories, and subcategories. By effectively structuring these, you can improve search engines’ comprehension of your content and website architecture. To make your website easier to use, you should group similar content together. This means putting pages with similar topics into the same categories and subcategories. This will help users find the information they need more easily.
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Never Put “Noindex” URLs In the Sitemap For Your Website
The URLs that you wish search engines to neither crawl nor index are known as noindex URLs. These may be utility pages for your website that you would prefer not to appear in search results. It’s possible that you used the robots.txt file’s noindex tag or the meta robots approach to add the noindex to these pages. To avoid this issue, be careful with the URLs you include in your sitemap. If you’re using a dynamic sitemap, regularly check it to ensure that only the correct URLs are being added.
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Place The Sitemap Properly
It’s important to put your sitemap in a place where visitors can easily find it. This will help them navigate your website and find what they’re looking for quickly. You can put your sitemap on your homepage or in the root directory of your website. This will also help search engines find new pages on your website.
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Provide A URL For Your Sitemap
Once you generate a sitemap, add a link to it in your website’s footer to make it accessible across the site. This helps improve visibility for search engine crawlers. Neglecting to do so can reduce your site’s visibility.
Conclusion
By keeping your website organised and facilitating more effective site crawling by search engines, understanding sitemap best practices can provide your website a significant SEO boost. Consider it as the virtual counterpart of a front desk, greeting guests and pointing them in the right direction.
