What is Sitemap? – Definition
A sitemap is a file in XML format, located on a server. It contains a list of pages of a particular website and informs the Google crawlers (but also Yahoo, Bing, and other major search engines) about the website structure and its content.
What Is a Sitemap For?
The XML sitemap file is aimed at making page indexation easier. This is especially important for complex websites with numerous pages. It may also contain information such as: the date of the last page update, priority of a given page as well as the number of images. Correctly implemented, it enables quick indexing of priority pages, especially those which you have added recently.
How to Create an XML Sitemap?
There are many tools available online, both free-of-charge and paid, to help create XML sitemaps. Some SEO extensions have a built-in option to create such a file. One sitemap can contain up to 50,000 URLs. How to check if a sitemap has been implemented correctly? It is necessary to upload it on a server and add a link to the Google Search Console tool and the robots.txt file. You can check whether the file has been implemented correctly in the above-mentioned tool, SEO extensions (e.g. Open SEO Stats) and most effectively – in the site code.
Loading...
