Published: September 16, 2022
Reading Time: 1 min
Sitemap
What is a Sitemap?
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A sitemap refers to the list of different pages on a website. It helps search engines to crawl and index your content. It’s essentially the outline or blueprint of your site.
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Source: SEO Strategies & Tactics Course
Understanding Sitemaps
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You may not need a sitemap but adding one to your website will definitely help your search engine optimization efforts. It makes it easier for search engines to understand what your site is all about, which can increase your chances of improving your ranking in search results.
A sitemap tells a lot about your site structure and content. For instance, it tells search engines where a page is located on your site, when it was updated, and how important the page is compared to other pages.
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How to Add Sitemaps
1. Generate your sitemap
There are many plugins and sitemap generators that you can use to create your sitemap. Once you’ve generated it, make sure that all of the pages on your site are included.
2. Upload your site to Google
Submit your sitemap to your Google Search Console account.
3. Analyze the results
You can use the Sitemap Report to check if there are errors. It shows the number of pages that Google found in your sitemap and how many were actually indexed. It also shows excluded pages or those that are not indexed.
There may be errors or what Google thinks is duplicate content. You may want to check and fix them or see if you want those pages to be indexed or not.
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Types of Sitemaps
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1. XML sitemap – This is the most common type which is text-based and links to different pages on your site.
2. Image sitemap – As the name implies, it’s all about the images hosted on your site.
3. Video sitemap – This type helps Google crawl and understand the video content on your site.
Adding a sitemap can boost your SEO strategy as it enables search engines to find the different pages on your site. Learn more about sitemaps and other related topics in our SEO Strategy & Tactics Course.
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Additional Resources
To learn more about SEO best practices, check out our SEO Strategy & Tactics Course. For additional knowledge, check out the following articles:
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