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In order for Google to index every important page of the site, it is necessary to provide the best possible guidelines and make them as easy to find as possible. After building a site, an XML sitemap lists all the content and pages on it, ensuring that Google can find and index them all, and also helps Google understand the structure of the site. Google first introduced XML Sitemap in 2005.

Sitemaps are known as URL inclusion protocols because they advise search engines about what to search for. They conflict with robots . txt which is an exemption protocol because it tells search engines what not to index. It informs search engines about the pages on the site that are available for search. In case the site does not have an XML sitemap, it is not considered an error by search engines, but creating a Sitemap is recommended because it can improve SEO.

Why use XML Sitemap?

At the end of each line in the Sitemap you will notice a date. This tells Google when each post was last updated and helps you with SEO , because you want Google to crawl your updated content as quickly as possible. When the date changes, Google gets information that there is new content that can be searched and indexed. In addition, the Sitemap lists all URLs from the site. And that includes pages that search engines wouldn’t be able to find without a map. It gives signals to search engines which pages should be prioritized and thus indexed. You can also add a label that says which pages are the most important. Google bots will thus first focus on pages with priority.

Two more optional tags can also be added to pass additional data to search engines to help them find your site . The first, “lastmod”, informs them when the page was last changed. The second, “changefreq”, tells how often the page will be changed.

Adding an XML Sitemap to the site

Adding an XML Sitemap can be helpful to verify that Google has indexed all pages on your site. If there is a large difference in the number of “submitted” and “indexed” pages on a particular Sitemap , you should check for an error on the site.

If you have a very large site, it is sometimes necessary to split the site index map. One XML Sitemap is limited to 50,000 URLs. In the case of large sites that exceed this number of pages, another XML Sitemap is added. For smaller sites, you can use the XML Sitemap Generator. It allows you to define how often your pages are updated and which modified date is used. Once the generator has created a Sitemap , you must upload it to the site’s root domain. If you have a site made in WordPress , the Yoast plugin makes this job very easy.

What to include in an XML Sitemap?

Include in your Sitemap the pages (which include posts) that are important to the site. These are pages that have high quality content and are more likely to bring more organic traffic to the site.

Exclude pages with duplicate content, as well as those with ‘thin content’. Make sure that your XML Sitemap contains a field that shows the last modified time, a value that tells Google when the page was last modified. This is useful in cases where you want Google to re-index some pages of your site.

An XML Sitemap is useful for any site. Every site needs it so that Google can easily find the most important pages and know when they were last updated.

If you learned something new and interesting in this text, read more educational texts that we have prepared for you here: News & Stories

Made by Nebojša Radovanović – SEO Expert @Digitizer