XML sitemaps are very useful for your website SEO. They allow Google bots to understand your site structure, and get to the important pages of your website very fast. According to Google,
“Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover.”
If making sure your website is visible on search engine result pages (SERP) and ensure your products and services are patronized, installing XML Sitemap on your business website is something you really don’t want to overlook.
An XML (Extensible Markup Language) Sitemap is a text file used to detail all URLs on a website. It can include extra information (metadata) on each URL, with details of when they were last updated, how important they are and whether there are any other versions of the URL created in other languages. All of this is done to help the search engines crawl your website more efficiently, allowing any changes to be fed to them directly, including when a new page is added or an old one removed.
Conclusion
When you do it right, XML sitemaps help search engines quickly find, crawl and index your website. Make use of an online sitemap generator or a sitemap generator plugin if your website is a CMS and also ensure you’ve properly formatted the sitemap file to get the most of their advantages:
You no longer need to rely on links to get your pages crawled.
Search engines will see new or updated sites and pages more quickly.
Search engine Bots can crawl pages more intelligently thanks to the meta-information available in sitemaps.
You can make sure that search engines are finding important information about images and videos, which are inaccessible to crawlers.
Have you created and submitted an XML sitemap for your website? What benefits have you noticed? Did you encounter any challenges? Share your ideas, issues, and solution in the comment section.