What is Sitemap ?

What is Sitemap ?

A sitemap is actually a List of  pages of your website. It’s either an XML or HTML file that contains all the URLs of the pages inside your blog/website.

HTML sitemap helps your visitors to navigate through your blog/website, while an XML sitemap helps the search engine crawlers do the same way.

Search engines such as Google and Bings uses XML sitemap to detect pages/URLs on website that the search bots may have missed during regular crawling.

When you submit your blog XML sitemap to Google Webmasters, it helps search engine crawlers to find all the URLs on your blog and add it to their database.

Submitting your blog XML to Google Webmaster helps you to display your blog in Google search results, index or crawl your blog and also improve the crawling rate of your blog.

Two type of sitemap:

1. Dynamic sitemap
2. Static sitemap

Dynamic sitemap: A dynamic sitemap is automatically changed when you add or remove pages. It's done by a software.

Static sitemap: A static sitemap changes when the webmaster updates it manually.

Why You Need an XML Sitemap ?

From a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) point of view sitemaps are extremely important. First we would like to clearly state that adding a sitemap does not affect search rankings. However, if there is some page on your site that is not indexed, then sitemap provide you a way to let search engines know about that page, so it can be indexed properly.

Sitemaps are very useful for new websites and blogs. As most new blogs usually don’t get many backlinks to their individual posts, it becomes harder for search engines to discover all of their posts and pages. Sitemaps allow those websites to help search engines crawl their sites more efficiently.