What is a sitemap?
In the online universe, websites are like cities. Almost every website has multiple web pages and a lot of different content. Just as real cities need maps to help people find their way around, websites also need a guiding tool. And that's what a sitemap is for. However sitemaps are not really meant for the human eyes. They are more intended to help web bots and search engines like Google.
But how exactly will a sitemap help your website get more traffic and potentially make more money?
Sitemaps for Search Engines
Sitemaps serve as a digital compass for search engines. They make it easier to understand the layout and structure of a website's content. The sitemap tells the search engines what are all the pages about, what's the page hiearchy and also what's the frequency of content updates. All this information is essential for efficient indexing.
The SEO Boost
But why does efficient indexing matter? - It directly affects your website's performance in search results. When you website is correctly indexed, it has a better chance of appearing in search queries. Thanks to that a lot more people will be able to see and visit your website and potentially become your customer.
Creating a Sitemap
There are 2 ways to make a sitemap. You can either do it manually or use a tool for it. However most of the modern website builders (like Webflow create a sitemap automatically so you don't have to do almost anything. If you're not using a website builder, you can use a tool like xml-sitemaps.com.
Uploading Your Sitemap
Once you have your sitemap ready, you also need to let Google know about it. First you need to upload the website into your website's main directory. Typically you can do this by placing the sitemap.xml file at the root of your domain. Your sitemap is then at yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml.
The Google Connection
As the last step you need to upload the sitemap to Google Search Console. There you can submit the link to your sitemap. By doing so you're ensuring that Google knows about you and thanks to that it's easier to be indexed and appear in the search results.
However just uploading your sitemap isn't enough for your website to appear in the top search results. If you want your website to rank higher on Google, I can help you. Just book a free consultation with me and we can discuss your current situation and see how exactly I can help you.
Thank you for reading and have a good rest of your day!
