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What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is a file that provides humans and search engines with a list of webpages and files on a site. The specific files vary from site to site but usually include images, videos, and PDFs.

Sitemaps can be created for human visitors (HTML sitemaps) or web crawlers and search engines (XML sitemaps). Both sitemaps help humans and search engines understand the relationship between webpages and files on the site.

Types of Sitemaps

There are two types of sitemaps, namely: 

  • HTML sitemap
  • XML sitemap

1 Sitemap HTML

The HTML sitemap provides human visitors with links to the content on a site. It is usually a regular webpage formatted into a sitemap. 

Sample of an HTML sitemap

The content included in an HTML sitemap varies from site to site. However, they typically include the clickable title of the webpages they link to. Some may split the content by category and include their last modified time. 

While created for human visitors, search engines may use the HTML sitemap to understand the hierarchy of the content published on the site.

2 XML Sitemaps

XML sitemaps provide search engines with links to a site’s content. They usually include the content’s URL, image count, and last modified time. 

Sample of the XML sitemap

XML sitemaps are created using a .xml file and can typically be accessed by adding sitemap.xml o sitemap_index.xml after your domain name. For example, https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml o https://yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml.

Although created for search engines, human visitors can access the XML sitemap. Some bloggers even use the XML sitemap for competitor research. This allows them to discover their competitor’s latest posts and gain insights into their content strategy.

Importance of Sitemaps

Sitemaps help visitors and search engines to discover the content on your site. This ensures that search engines can always identify and crawl your content. This makes them helpful for discovering pagine orfane, which are webpages that are not linked to other content on your site. 

Sitemaps are also helpful for visitors looking to find or discover content on your site. Instead of relying on the search bar or filters, they can visit your HTML sitemap to discover the content they are interested in. 

Sitemap Best Practices

Sitemaps help search engines to discover your URLs. So, setting them up correctly should be a top priority, as they help improve your SEO. To get the most out of them, it is recommended that you follow the sitemap best practices listed below.

1 Avoid Noindex Pages in the Sitemap

Your sitemap should only include pages you want search engines to index and display on search results pages. Avoid including pages with the noindex tag in your sitemap. It misdirects search engines and wastes your scansionare il budget.

2  Include All Important Pages

Your sitemap must contain the essential pages you want search engines to indice. This includes key landing pages, service and product pages, blog posts, and other high-value content on your site. In essence, if you want it to appear on search results pages, add it to the sitemap,

3 Keep the Sitemap Up-to-Date

Your sitemap must reflect the changes you make to your site’s content, preferably in real-time. So, ensure to update your sitemap whenever you add, remove, or modify the pages and files on your site. 

4 Submit the Sitemap to Search Engines

While search engines can find your content without a sitemap, creating and submitting one improves their chances of discovering your most important content. So, submit your sitemap to Console di ricerca di Google e Strumenti per i Webmaster di Bing.

5 Ensure Your URLs Are Crawlable

Your sitemap should only contain links to content available on the web. The links must not return 404 non trovato or Soft 404 errors and must not lead to permanent or temporary or permanent redirects. In the case of redirects, the URL in the sitemap should be the same as the final URL in the redirect. 

6 Use HTTPS URLs in Your Sitemap

Search engines prefer indexing the HTTPS version of a site over the regular HTTP version. So, if you use HTTPS, ensure to include the HTTPS URLs in your sitemap.

7 Reference the Sitemap in Your robots.txt File

Include your sitemap in your robots.txt file. This ensures that search engines can find it easily without needing to look at several locations to find it. If you use Rank Math, Rank Math automatically generates your sitemap and includes its URL in your robots.txt file.

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