Above, we have discussed the steps of developing a sitemap for your website. Now, you can learn more
about FAQs about site sitemap as follows:
12 Frequently Asked Questions About Website
Sitemap
1. A website sitemap. What is it?
It's a method for users to view your site or blog and easily find content. Creating this sitemap in different
ways can help meet content needs as follows.
• Go to the front page of the blog and place the sitemap at the bottom.
• Create a separate HTML page which you can connect to your navigation or footer where the user can
go to a particular page with links to all the different pages inside your website.
A sitemap is perfect for those websites that want to be accessed when people search for content using
crawlers such as Bing and Google. Also, it's effortless for consumers to find content inside your blog.
2. Which websites need to have a sitemap?
Technically, there is no downside to having a website sitemap because they help you get noticed much
better in search engines when consumers are searching for information users.
If you own a high-ranking website with lots of links that join to all sorts of subpages, then it becomes
harder for Google or other crawlers to locate the website content when lacking a sitemap.
The 2nd website is one lacking a well-linked and optimised content. A user usually digs deep by clicking
multiple URLs to find the specific link with the required information. It's good to have a direct URL that
leads to a particular page a user is navigates.
The 3rd website needing a sitemap is a brand new one with a low ranking compared to the existing
ones. One way to boost your presence and optimisation including a sitemap when creating some build-
up for users when finding content through navigation.
3. What is HTML and XML sitemap?
HTML sitemap
HTML sitemap is a page with current webpages, including links. For instance, when you go through a
page and view the footer's link, there's a URL known as sitemap. What's more, within this link, you'll find
this page.
In simpler terms, we can describe HTML sitemap as a list /group of URLs, links to pages, and pages
across your blog.
The sitemap aids Google when crawling your website to make content search much easier. Significantly
a dynamically-updated HTML sitemap works better. So, when coming up with a new blog or page, a
sitemap updates automatically after a search engine crawls the HTML page.

When designing an HTML sitemap, utilise user-friendly CMS products like WordPress and Drupal. If
you're not technically-minded or unsure, consult a website designer, web manager, or freelancer, or
consultant who can perform the updates.
XML sitemap
Now we have the more complex kind of sitemap better known as XML. It's a document integrated in
XML that guides Google to search relevant pages of your blog. It also doubles as an instruction manual
for finding content.
We can call it a blueprint for Google.
Sometimes, you can come up with webpages across sites that lack anything linking to them, but you
want a search engine to find and index them. This is the place you could define these webpages within
your specific XML sitemap for Google to find them. As a bonus, this system safeguards you from
depending on multiple URLs to crawl your site and view content.
Your main navigation plus URLs is the first point of call, but your web sitemap could also guide Google
when indexing content that can't be located with the first crawling attempt.
4. What are the SEO benefits of XML & HTML Sitemaps?
If you want your blog or website to rank better on Google, you need good Search Engine Optimization.
Not only including relevant keywords but also quality content and reputable links.

Photo credit: ayima.com
As earlier discussed, XML and HTML are the two main categories of sitemaps. Let's see the benefits the
latter has on SEO.
 Improves search engines functionality and speed

Whether new or old, an XML sitemap will increase the crawler's speed in a website. It finds the content
users are searching for and position it to a higher place. Although it acts as a store for a URL list, search
crawlers normally use HTML links to discover the internet.
What's more, this sitemap increases your blog's attention by spotlighting the content consumers want
much more effortless.
 Organises large websites
The next SEO benefit you can get when using an HTML sitemap is an organised website. Let's say more
people are navigating your site and getting the required information; that means more traffic.
You'll be able to engage with potential clients, especially for those with eCommerce sites such as a
clothing store, technical equipment shop, and much more. Also, a business blog with several sections,
including features, how to use, benefits, and even type of product, makes the navigation seamless.
 Shows the objective of your website
This sitemap shows your site's specific purpose to the interested audience. It utilises SEO when
highlighting relevant keywords for the sitemap.
For a webpage with little cross-links , an anchor text comes in handy when creating suitable keywords.
 Acts as a reliable project administrator
An HTML sitemap acts as a websites' architectural blueprint for easier management. It manages the
connections between your blog's pages plus subpages to improve the visibility and navigation of the
blog.
 Improves page linking
Having an HTML sitemap makes your pages/subpages link much better than those blogs without one.
This will improve your site's visitors experience when navigating through a certain page.
Remember, not every webpage will links via a URL in either the header or footer. That's when a sitemap
comes in to find suitable connections on how audiences search for items. Plus, it improves the current
website's organic search visibility by using the linked pages.
 Enhances search engine visibility
Depending on how your website is built, Google might fail to index all the webpages. If you have a
connection on your web pages, common search bots may follow that URL for standard verification. In
doing so, it may not index the other existing documents on your blog.
A site with an HTML sitemap will easily direct the bots to consider the other pages. Not only to improve
the finder's task but also to make sure it stays longer when navigating the indexing plan.
 Helps pinpoint website areas that need navigation improvement

A growing site can have duplicate data because of multiple webpages causing a tough time for your
specific search engine. Fortunately, you can set out everything and utilise the HTML sitemap to locate
any duplication and redundancies in your blog.
Also, a sitemap with a heat map and analytic tools gathers that you have a better audience that's using
HTML sitemaps rather than navigation.

Photo credit: excel-easy.com
 XML sitemap improves a site's ranking
An efficient XML sitemap can enhance the rankings on search engines. More consumers can click on
your blog to get more people talking about the services and keep you on a higher level than the
competitor.
5. How do I create a sitemap?
Creating and generating a sitemap is essential for a website and it includes a page list for Google to find.
If you don't want it to locate the webpage by emitting it from the sitemap, that doesn't mean the page
won't be indexed. So, Google will help users find pages and content but will not exclude them when
crawling.
The XML sitemap allows search engines to offer an improved content indexing. Ensure you set the
output by using the correct format, free from errors. For instance, Google requires Sitemap Protocol 0.9
to offer the best outcome. Your sitemap should:
 Use UTF-8 encoding
 Include an entry for each URL (main XML tag)
 Start with a suitable opening and finish with a closing tag
 State the protocol standard/namespace within the tag
After entering all these details, just:
 Download the sitemap

 Upload the sitemap to a website
 Register the sitemap with a search engine
6. How do I tell Google where my sitemap is?
The first thing is to find your sitemap in your robox.txt file. This is an essential document for technical
SEO, and let's explore its importance, implications, and how it works.
Robot.txt file
This file instructs Google and other crawlers like Bing on handling URLs and sections of your website.
Where can you find it?
If you type a website link like this one, "page.com/robot.txt", it takes you to a plain text page showing a
few lines of different descriptions of different things.
The two main categories of the robox.txt file include Allow or Disallow your crawler to perform specific
tasks. When you Allow, Google will go to the website area, index it, and find the content. On the other
hand, disallow means you don't want the crawler to find specific pages and locations of your content.
By using these two options, you can guide the crawler to access or deny specific areas of your website.
7. How many types of sitemaps are there?
The 2 major kinds of sitemaps include HTML sitemap and XML sitemap. All these are important in a
website for seamless user navigation and content search.
When using tools like WordPress, you can install plugins that generate these sitemaps. Crawlers, spiders,
or bots index sites and find sitemaps to index every page in the sitemap. A user will then have a variety
of information about the content looking for inside your blog.
8. What is the Sitemap format?
The 9 standard sitemap formats supported by Google's Webmaster tools include RSS 2.0 feeds, XML
sitemap, GeoRSS files, Media files, Text files and more. Let's look at each individually to know how it
benefits a website owner.
 RSS Feed sitemap
Sometimes, these feeds (Really Simple Syndication) are created through different blogs automatically.
It's a website content format and an XML language made of entries with metadata. This allows for fast
indexing on your website.
If people are scraping your site, stealing content and getting indexed before you, these feeds update
quickly and go straight into a search console and get picked up and indexed before everybody else.

Create your syndication so that you do an update on your site. It will go out to other sites and link back
to your site as the leading authority. Remember to always indexed before your competition for better
ranking and user content search.
 Media RSS feeds
These feeds are essential in a website because they help newsreader applications to know there are
media on the feed. Also, the tags give viewers insight into the information such as file width, type, and
size.
 Text files
A sitemap usually has a webpage link per line for a search engine to scan. Follow these steps to ensure
the crawler is compatible with this text file.
1. Should not exceed 50,000 URLs
2. Save the sitemaps as UTF-8 files, especially for a website with non-English characters
3. If you're using Yahoo, ensure the main text sitemap is named urllist.txt
 GeoRSS files
These documents are also known as KML files suitable for geographic data. That means search engines
can locate data quickly using the user's location. What's more, it pushes the results to the top when a
consumer is searching for something.
A geo sitemap has geographic location information, especially helpful for web admins.
 News sitemap
If you're trying to get into Google news, you need this type of sitemap. You can only have the last 2 days'
worth of info in there and no more than 1000 URLs.
Inside, you must include the genre, publication, date, and title, but you don't need a specified keyword.
Note that this sitemap should have links for documents published in the last 2 days. You can remove
older articles from this sitemap, but they remain indexed available for 30 days.
 Image sitemaps
It helps you get all your images index and a turn of image search. Yoast is an excellent tool for this type
of sitemap.

Photo credit: searchenginejournal.com
 Video sitemap
The other format we have is a video sitemap that helps furnish a search engine with metadata about
your site's content and video. You can tell Google the description, title, run time, audience intended,
and category for each film on the blog. Not only to improve the search engine's video content
knowledge but also to enhance your web listings on search results.
When using the WordPress plugin, video indexing helps show up in google search. It's perfect for those
with a website dealing with YouTube videos. They can upload them and get indexed in google while
increasing the site's visitors more quickly than those blogs without this sitemap.
 Mobile sitemap
You only need this type when you have a mobile site on a subdomain or a different domain. You're going
to specify in that mobile sitemap the relationship between the URLs.
 Index sitemap
If you have over 50,000 URLs, you're going to create multiple sitemaps. List the numerous sitemaps in an
index sitemap. Remember, this kind of sitemap can be no larger than 10 megabytes.
 Resource of a Resource sitemap
Everybody could use this type of sitemap, but most websites preferred the XML sitemap.
Important tips on sitemaps
 Use plugins
 A smaller site can get better indexing and navigation.
 Include URLs that you want to index. If you have blocked links behind roblox.txt or other
parameters, they should not be in your sitemap.
 Submit your specific sitemap to google search console and the data for indexing
 Take a look at your competitor sitemap. You can get an idea of what they've already optimised
for, and you can then reverse engineer that for yourself to allow you to rank for more keywords.
9. What are the best tools to create a sitemap?
A variety of online tools can help you create a sitemap. An advantage of some of these applications is
that they are free. That means you can tweak and amend the needed areas without worrying about user
fees. The following are some popular ones that make this process easy for beginners, beginners, and
skilled users.
 PowerMapper
This sitemap generator tool has one-click site tools to let you check spelling errors, locate broken links,
see browser compatibility, web standards validation, and more. You can use it to create sitemaps in a
specific style in your browser.
 XML sitemap

Another tool that does not require a new user to download or register is the XML sitemap. It comes in
handy for upcoming and small websites with less than 500 web pages. What you need to do is enter a
link, and it will create the sitemap for you.
 WriteMaps
Another generator for creating colour-coded flowcharts on your website is WriteMaps. It acts as a visual
application using colours when outlining content used for the site links. What's more, it makes
collaboration on various projects for large teams easy.
 Sitemap Writer Pro
If you want an easy-to-use and fast sitemap generator, this tool is among the best. It has 7 sitemaps
types for you to crawl multiple web pages. Also, you can import it into your site's content management
system for friendlier use.
 InSpyder
Map your URLs without restrictions using this sitemap generator kit. It's downloadable to let you
synthesise all of your website's links into a relevant XML sitemap in minutes. Most users love this
generator's bonus feature is its high compatibility with Yahoo, Ask.com, Bing, and Google.
 Screaming Frog
You can use this sitemap tool generator to crawl over 500 URLs and comes with many benefits,
including:
a) Discovers duplicate content
b) Find broken links
c) Check bounce rates, conversions, goals
 Slick Plan
The last sitemap generator we look at is Slick Plan. Thanks to its host of tools, you can design a website
for a small business, freelancing, or an agency much more accessible. It has a friendly drag-and-drop
user interface for simple organizing and testing of website content. Plus, it makes sure the pages have a
great visual, unlike others without this tool.
10. How to create and submit a sitemap to google search
console?
The variety of programs that makes sitemap creation are easy to use. For instance, Squarespace, Yoast,
Shopify and more tools can help you create your sitemap almost automatically. But remember, the
sitemap URL for each platform is going to be different.
Follow these steps below:
 Go to your website URL and click enter
You should see your sitemap up there
 Copy it
 Go to google search console
 Click on sitemap and enter your sitemap XML domain
 Click submit
If it brings the notification "couldn't be fetch", reload it and wait to be successfully uploaded.

When submitting your sitemap to google console for the first time, it will show zero discovered URLs
because it has not crawled your website yet. But once you log back in after google has crawled it, which
can take days, weeks, or months, you will see all the links that have been shuffled.
Pro Tip: If you have moved pages around, changed content structure, or deleted posts on your website,
make sure you update your sitemap by resubmitting a new URL on the google search console.
11. Can I use a sitemap to show a specific URL?
Google algorithms display a particular link in the search results. To make the outcome much better,
include your sitemap preference in the URL.
12. Where can I place my sitemap?
If you're using Google, they have a cross-submission feature for you to put your preferred sitemap in a
specific location. Ensure your website is verified in Webmaster Tools for easy navigation and content
search.