Types of Site maps🗺️
Page Site map
The indexation of pages and posts is improved using a page sitemap or regular sitemap. A page sitemap can also include the photos and videos on each page for websites that are not image- or video-focused, such as photography and videography sites.
Video Site map
Similar to a page sitemap focusing primarily on video content, an XML video sitemap is only necessary if videos are essential to your company. If not, add the video link to your page sitemap and conserve your crawl budget (the limited number of pages and resources that can be crawled across your site).
News Site map
You need a news sitemap if you post news and want your content to appear on top stories and Google News. A key guideline here is to not include articles in the file that were published more than two days ago.
Make sure you only submit news articles because Google News sitemaps aren't favored in standard ranking results. Additionally, Google advises using structured data to indicate your content thumbnail as they do not enable picture links.
Image Site map
Image sitemaps are only required if photos are crucial to your business, such as a photography or stock photo website, similar to the case with video sitemaps. If not, you can still include them in your page sitemap and mark them with the picture object schema so that they are crawled together with the URL and content of the page.
Site map Index
It's possible that you'll need more than one sitemap. You require an index file that contains a list of all the sitemaps when you use multiple sitemap files. It is the index file that you upload to Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console.
You should be aware of the following restrictions while using sitemaps:
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Too many URLs will only prevent some of your pages from being indexed.
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Except for the news sitemap, all sitemaps should include no more than 50,000 URLs.
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A news sitemap should contain no more than 1000 URLs.
- A sitemap's uncompressed file size shouldn't exceed 50MB.
Things to Consider💡
To make a sitemap manually, stick to these instructions precisely:
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Select the pages on your website that Google should crawl, then decide which version of each page should be the canonical one. Avoid including URLs that are password-protected, need a login, or are prohibited by robots.txt files since search engines cannot crawl them. Only if you add them will you encounter coverage issues in GSC.
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Identify whether you require more than one sitemap. For pages, posts, and categories, many websites employ distinct files. Keep in mind that you require numerous sitemaps if you have more than 50,000 URLs.
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All of your URLs should be coded using XML elements to resemble the sitemap you intend to produce.
- Create a sitemap index file and include links to each of the sitemaps you made if you have multiple sitemap files.
Adding Your Sitemap to Google➕
The most effective way to send Google your sitemap is via Google Search Console (GSC).
- Goto sitemap in Google Search Console.
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To submit, provide the URL for your sitemap. You only need to enter the URL for the sitemap index file if you have several sitemaps.
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You may inform Google that you have one by adding the following line to your robots.txt file:
Sitemap: http://demo.com/sitemap.xml.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a website's sitemap do?
You can describe the pages, videos, and other resources on your site and the connections between them in a sitemap file. This file is examined by search engines like Google to improve the way they index your website.
What does a site map look like?
A visual sitemap is a hierarchical graphic that displays the website's information architecture. It helps you understand how the site is structured and how the various sections relate.
How does blackhat SEO work?
Black hat SEO is used to manipulate search engine algorithms to boost a website's rankings.
What is "grey hat" SEO?
In its broadest sense, Grey hat SEO uses methods that may err a little from what would be seen as best practice but are not explicitly against Google's standards.
Describe White Hat SEO.
A website's position on search engine results can be improved by using white hat SEO, which consists of only legal search engine optimization techniques (SERP).
Conclusion
This article covers everything you need to know about SEO Site Map. We hope this article on SEO Site Map helps you in your journey.
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