{"id":119377,"date":"2021-02-19T15:12:16","date_gmt":"2021-02-19T07:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seo-hacker.com\/?p=19377"},"modified":"2021-05-11T05:48:34","modified_gmt":"2021-05-11T05:48:34","slug":"sitemap-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seo-hacker.com\/sitemap-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"Ultimate Sitemap SEO Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Technical factors are some of the biggest challenges an SEO can face; especially if they\u2019re not well-versed with handling complex website technologies such as the servers, codes, frameworks, etc. But one such technical factor has been around almost as long as SEO has – Sitemaps. An integral part of making your website more search-friendly and optimized. Even though sitemaps are well-known in the industry and tons of resources are available in search, there are still a lot of misconceptions on how to properly use sitemaps for SEO – its benefits, best practices, etc. That said, here\u2019s everything you need to know about sitemaps concerning SEO:<\/span><\/p>\n

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What is a Sitemap?<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

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A sitemap is a file you create that contains every page in your website that you want to be crawled and indexed regularly. Sitemaps aim to assist and inform search engine crawlers the BETTER way to crawl your website (signaling to them that these pages are the ones they should focus on).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Pages in your sitemap are the ones that you believe should be included in the search results since they\u2019re informative and can potentially answer a user\u2019s query. Your website\u2019s XML sitemap should be easily discoverable so search engine crawlers can regularly check and update their data of your sitemap.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to\u00a0<\/span>Google<\/span><\/a>, a sitemap is:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them. Search engines like Google read this file to more intelligently crawl your site. A sitemap tells Google which pages and files you think are important in your site, and also provides valuable information about these files: for example, for pages, when the page was last updated, how often the page is changed, and any alternate language versions of a page.<\/span><\/em>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What is the Difference Between XML and HTML Sitemaps<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

HTML and XML are two types of coding languages used in making pages. The primary difference between XML sitemaps and HTML sitemaps is who they\u2019re intended for BUT they do share the same purpose. XML sitemaps are for search engine crawlers. HTML sitemaps are for human users. But the purpose of the two is the same – helping users\/crawlers find important pages on our site.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since we\u2019re talking about sitemaps in relation to SEO, we\u2019re going to focus on XML sitemaps since they\u2019re the ones mainly working together with crawlers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sitemap Benefits<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Aside from helping and making sure that crawlers find, crawl, and index the pages that you want, here are other benefits of creating and optimizing your sitemap:<\/span><\/p>\n