WHAT IS A SITEMAP? EXPLAINED SIMPLY

Table of Contents
• What is a Sitemap?
• Why Sitemap is Important for Website
• Do You Really Need a Sitemap?
• How to Create a Sitemap
• Submitting Sitemap to Google

In this training guide today, I will be teaching you on all you need to know about sitemap, and also how you can be able to create sitemap for yourself. And you will mostly need sitemap if you are doing some things related to SEO or if you are trying to link your website to Google Search Console then you will have to create a sitemap file for it too, but they other reasons to that you can use sitemap for, but as we move along in this guide, we will be discussing more about it.

WHAT IS A SITEMAP?

We will be talking about sitemap now and after this everyone reading this guide will full understand what sitemap is about and the meaning. Sitemap is a file that helps to tell search engines like binge, Google or Wikipedia what pages or links that are on your website and also how they are connected. It works like a map or list that helps search engines like Google to be able to easily understand, find or index your website links or pages. Let say that it helps Google to know which of the pages are important, when you created or update the pages and also to even help Google to know which of the pages are existing in your website. Let all of us just think sitemap as a table of contents for our website, like instead for Google to be thinking or guessing on our pages or links, we will give it a clear and direct guide so that there will not be anything missing. And sitemap is useful for blogs or website with many pages. If you create a sitemap, you will sometimes submit it to Google Search Console, so that Google or other search engines can be able to crawl your website faster.

WHY SITEMAP IS IMPORTANT FOR WEBSITE

Now we will be talking about the importance of sitemap, which actually sitemap is important for your website or blog because it will help binge, Google and other search engines to be able to understand and find the content on your website more easily. When you have a sitemap on your website or blog website, then you are a kind of guiding Google to all the pages that is on your website and this will help to increase the chance of the pages that is on website to be crawled and indexed faster by search engines, which will be helpful for your website or blogs. Because Google and search engines now knows your website and pages, which can be show to people when they search what is on your website when Google eventually indexed your website.

DO YOU REALLY NEED A SITEMAP?

Many people and beginners sometimes ask if they really need a sitemap file on their website, and I will just answer that question by saying yes, you will need a sitemap if your website or blog is new and still growing. Remember that I earlier told you that sitemap helps search engine to find and understand your website pages faster. But that does not mean that without sitemap Google and search engines cannot discover your website and pages, but just that it can take longer for search engines to be able to discover your website and pages. So, I will rather advice that the best thing is to just add sitemap to your website hence it does not harm your website but helps to make search engine discover your website faster. So, if you want your website to get better visibility and Google to index your website then it is good to have it.

HOW TO CREATE A SITEMAP

Creating a sitemap is very simple and it is not that hard and they different ways or method that you can create a sitemap but it depends on the platform that your website is built on, like WordPress, Blogger, Wix and many others.

1. Creating Sitemap on WordPress:

If you are using WordPress for your website, then easiest way that you can create a sitemap is by using SEO Plugin, and some of the Plugins are like Yoast SEO, Rank Math or other SEO Plugins can automatically generate a sitemap for you. So, once you have installed and activated the Plugin, the Plugin will create a sitemap in your website background and it will automatically update on its own, whenever you publish or write a new content on your website or blog website. And your sitemap will normally look like this “yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml”.

2. Creating Sitemap on Blogger:

While if you are using blogger for your website then you don’t need to worry too much because it does not need any Plugin. Blogger will automatically create or generate a sitemap for your website. So, once you have written some post on your blogger website then you can go ahead to check your sitemap and you will notice that blogger has already generated a sitemap for your website and your sitemap will look like this, if you are using blogger sub domains “yourwebsite.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml”.

3. Creating Sitemap with Online Tools:

So, if you are not using WordPress or blogger for your website, then you can go ahead to use a free online sitemap generator tool, and what these tools does is that, it will scan your website and a create a sitemap file for your website. And after you are done generating the sitemap for your website, then you will go ahead and upload the sitemap file to the root of your website folder using the file manager on your hosting.

SUBMITTING SITEMAP TO GOOGLE

By now that you are done creating your website, then you will go ahead to submit your sitemap to Google and to do that, you will use Google Search Console to do that. And if you want to submit your sitemap to Google so that it can be indexed, then you can follow this guide “How to Submit Your Site to Google Search Console” after submitting your sitemap to Google, it helps your website to get indexed faster, immediate Google is done checking your website. But the benefit of submitting your sitemap to Google is that Google will keep on checking your sitemap for any updated pages automatically.

With everything on this guide, I already know you understand what is sitemap and also how to create a sitemap for your website and submit it to Google. You can always visit our blog to learn more and also share this website to your friends and love ones, so that they can be able to learn with you.