What is a Sitemap?
A sitemap is a file where you can list the web pages of your site to tell Google and other search engines about the organization of your site content. Search engine web crawlers like Googlebot read this file to more intelligently crawl your site.
History
Context
Sitemaps are particularly useful for:
- New sites with few external links, helping them to get indexed by search engines.
- Large sites with many pages, where it might be difficult for crawlers to navigate through the entire site structure.
- Sites with pages that are isolated or not well linked, ensuring all content is discoverable.
- Dynamic content or pages that are updated frequently, to keep search engines informed of changes.
Types of Sitemaps
- XML Sitemap: The most common type, used to inform search engines about URLs on a website available for crawling.
- HTML Sitemap: Designed for human visitors, providing a navigational aid for users to find pages on the site.
- Image Sitemap: Specifically for images, helping search engines understand and index images on the site.
- Video Sitemap: For video content, providing detailed information about videos to video search engines.
- News Sitemap: For news publishers to ensure that their news articles are quickly indexed by Google News.
Components of an XML Sitemap
- URL: The location of the page or file.
- Last Modified: When the file was last changed.
- Change Frequency: How frequently the page is likely to change.
- Priority: The priority of this URL relative to other URLs on the site.
Submission and Usage
Sitemaps can be submitted to search engines via:
External Resources
Related Topics