Sitemaps – How Important are they for SEO?

A sitemap is a list of all the pages on your website within a domain. It allows search engines to crawl your website more efficiently. Further, it provides various SEO benefits. Your SEO Agency in Ontario will likely advise you to add a sitemap on your website for better search engine crawling and indexing. This blog will further highlight the benefits of sitemaps for SEO.

Types of Sitemaps

Your website has two types of sitemaps – HTML and XML. Let’s discuss them further.

HTML Sitemap

HTML sitemap allows users to navigate your website. Search engines also use it to find new URLs on your website. It contains clickable titles for your website’s pages, products, posts, etc. In some cases, it may include the publication date or last modified date of the content.

XML Sitemap

XML sitemap contains links to your website’s pages, posts, products, attachments, etc., in an XML format. It helps search engines discover every piece of content available on your website. Usually, it includes the URL of the content and a <lastmod> tag to indicate the last modified date of the content. The sitemap index contains the links to every XML sitemap on your website. The following are different types of XML sitemaps present on a sitemap index.

• Post Sitemap – It contains the URL of every post on your site. For instance, if you publish blogs and articles on your website, include their URLs in your post sitemap. It will signal the search engines that you want these posts to rank on SERP.
• Page Sitemap – It contains the links to every page on your website. Further, it helps drive search engines to the location of significant pages on your website. These are – Home, About, Blog, Contact, Products/Services, and other important pages on your website.
• Image Sitemap – It informs search engines about the images you have added to the different pages on your website. Search engines can further crawl them, thereby improving the chances of them being ranked on image search results. This sitemap can be standalone, or you can choose to include them in another sitemap.
• Video Sitemap – It informs search engines about the videos you have added to your website.
• News Sitemap – It contains the links to the news articles on your website. If you want these news articles to appear on Google News, only then should you create this sitemap. Otherwise, even if you write these articles in a news format, you don’t need to add them to the news sitemap.
• Product Sitemap – It contains the product URL on your website. If your website sells physical or digital products, then only you need to create a product sitemap. It will allow search engines to check your products and display them for relevant search queries on SERP.
• Local Sitemap – It contains your business’s address and location coordinates. Search engines consider these coordinates to verify your business address. Adding a local sitemap helps improve your chance of ranking for local search results.

Benefits of Sitemaps for SEO

Adding a sitemap to your website can offer the following SEO benefits. Let’s discuss the benefits of sitemaps for SEO further.

Helps search engines find your URLs

By submitting sitemaps to search engines, you can inform them about your website. It will further help them discover your URLs faster. Ideally, your sitemap should contain the URL of only the pieces of content you want in your search result. You need not add insignificant pages to the website sitemap. These include URLs with no index tags, URLs disallowed in the robots.txt files, orphan pages with no value, etc.

Helps search engines discover orphaned content

Your website might contain pages, posts, etc., that are not linked to other pages on your website. These are called orphan pages. If these pages have no value, you need not include them in your sitemap. However, if they hold value, you need to add them to your sitemap. Otherwise, it might be challenging for search engines to discover these orphan pages.

Informs search engines whenever you update content

Search engines consider the <lastmod> tag in the sitemap to determine whether a specific URL has been updated since their last visit. Accordingly, search engines can decide whether to recrawl your website.

Inform search engines about the alternate versions of your content

If your website content is available in multiple languages, you must inform the search engines for SEO purposes. You can do so by including their URLs in the sitemap. It will help search engines identify different languages available for the content.

Improve User experience

Providing HTML sitemaps to website visitors helps them search your site directly for the specific content they are looking for. As a result, they will not have to rely on search bars or search engines to look for particular content. It will further improve the overall user experience for your web visitors. It will further help increase dwell time and reduce the bounce rate of your website. All of these can further contribute to improved search rankings.

Build internal links

An HTML sitemap is an effective way to create internal links. As they contain the links to all your website content, they help create efficient internal linking opportunities.

Considering all these aspects, you cannot ignore the significance of sitemaps for SEO. They don’t affect the actual ranking of your web pages. Instead, they act as a guide to help search engines crawl your website effectively to improve your search engine visibility.

HireH Consulting offers a wide range of SEO Services in Ontario. They can help create a proper sitemap on your website and submit the same to search engines for efficient crawling and indexing. You can hire them to improve your website’s performance on search engines.