XML sitemaps enable webmasters to tell search engines like Google and Bing about the pages of their websites. By creating sitemaps, you can continue to improve you traffic from search engines.

Bruce Clay has published a comprehensive article on XML sitemaps how to create your own.

He says, “For SEO purposes, you must build an XML sitemap and keep it up to date to help ensure that search engines index and crawl all the important pages on your site.

While some view an XML sitemap as a “nice to have,” it’s actually an SEO best practice for every site to have at least one — even though Google says that sites under 500 pages might not need it.

Sure, the search engines should be able to find all the pages by following links on the site, but the reality is that many sites don’t follow proper linking architecture. So it can be hard for search engines to discover the content.

Benefits of XML sitemaps include:

  • They improve the crawl rate and indexation on a site.
  • They can help you spot problems (for Google, check Search Console).
  • They provide other useful information to search engines about your site.
  • They alert search engines to new pages and hopefully get them indexed sooner than if you waited for search engines to find them”.

What Is an XML Sitemap and How Do I Make One?

Bruce Clay’s Blog
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