Preface
When optimizing your website for SEO, one of your goals is to provide Google the right signals so that it can index your website better. An optimized XML sitemap(Site map optimization) is one of those signals that can lead to faster indexing and higher rankings.
Your sitemap will tell search engines the location of a page on your website, when it was updated, the updating frequency, and the importance of the page as it’s related to other pages on your site. Without a proper sitemap, Google bots might think that your site has duplicate content, which will actually hurt your SEO ranking.
in this article, we give you 13 practical solutions for site map optimization. If you’re ready for your website to get indexed faster by search engines, just follow these 13 easy steps to reach a site map optimization.
What does Site Map mean?
A sitemap is a model of a website’s content designed to help both users and search engines navigate the site. The site map can be a hierarchical list of pages (with links) organized by topic, an organization chart, or an XML document that provides instructions to search engine crawl bots.
A site map may also be spelled sitemap.
13 practical solutions for site map optimization
Creating a Sitemap (Site Map or Sitemap) One of the most important parts of any website optimization is Site maps not only show your website design to search engines, but they are also able to provide the following information:
- What is the approximate time of the page refresh?
- It’s been a while since the last page change.
- How important the pages are to each other.
Site maps some websites are of particular importance. Websites that:
- It contains great content that is not linked to each other.
- They do not have links from other websites.
- They have thousands of pages.
As is obvious, site maps include a list of web addresses for robots to help them index the most important pages of the site. In this post, we will introduce you to the tips that will help you improve search engine performance by optimizing it for search engines.
Use tools and extensions to automate site map generation
Build a sitemap using tools that are customizable or extensions such as Google XML Sitemaps It’s very simple in WordPress. WordPress websites that use Yoast SEO Users can take advantage of the site’s map feature.
You can also follow the structure of site maps XML Make it manually, too. Technically mandatory to build site map in format XML It’s not. Simply placing the site addresses in a text file so that each address is in a row is sufficient.
However if interested in publishing more data on a sitemap such as an Attribute hreflang Be that as it may, using the tool is certainly a wise thing. Refer to the official Google post In this area you can find out more about making a site map manually.
Submit a sitemap on Google
You can go directly to Google Search Console and through the dashboard directly introduce the site map to this search engine. Before registering a site map, test it first to fix any errors.
Ideally, the number of pages indexed from the sitemap should be the same as the total number of addresses inserted. Remember that registering a sitemap on Google Search Console also means introducing the most important and valuable pages of the site. But this does not 100% guarantee that all listed addresses are indexed.
The benefits of registering a sitemap in Google Search are briefly:
- Help Google understand all web pages
- Detect possible errors and fix some index pages
Prioritize the importance of pages in the sitemap
When ranking pages, overall page quality is an important indicator.
If the site map drags Google’s robots to thousands of poor quality pages, the search engines will interpret that your website is not a website that users expect to see, even if there are many other good pages on your site.
Instead, try to direct the robots to the most important pages on the sitemap. These pages generally include:
- Optimized site pages
- Pages include images and videos
- Pages with original content
- Attractive pages for users like user reviews pages
Understand the problems of not indexing pages
In the new version of Google Search Console named part Coverage It was created that the indexing of the pages inserted in the site map is explained and the reason for this. So you can solve the page problems in this way and create a better site map.
Insert only canonical version URL s
If there are many similar pages on your website, you should only mention the canonical version of them on the sitemap. For example, if your store website has different colors of a product URL To be different, you need to tell Google which page is the index page for indexing.
In this case, Google’s robots only indexed the canonical pages, and so on Crawl Budget Saves.
Use Meta tags Robots Instead of file robots.txt
If you are not interested in indexing a particular page you can simply Meta tag robots By value noindex, follow Add to it.
This prevents the index of the page from being indexed, and at the same time validates the page to other pages. This technique helps us take advantage of important pages of the site that you are not interested in viewing in search results.
If you find that Google’s robots regularly visit non-important pages of the site in a significant number of ways, you can detect them by monitoring them in the file robots.txt prevent.
Don’t include Meta tag pages noindex on the site map?
To optimize Meta tags Robots And it should not be wasted by inserting meta tag pages robots by value no index avoid on the sitemap.
By including such pages on the site map, you are simultaneously informing Google that these pages are important but should not be indexed. These two messages are completely in conflict with each other and their existence is not a positive sign that the site map is optimistic.
Build automated sitemaps on large websites
On large websites, it is best to create site maps in a way that changes the meta tags robots Or if pages are deleted, site maps will also be automatically updated and updated.
Use Site Maps XML and feeds RSS/Atom
Feeds RSS/Atom Search engines alert when updating a site.
Google suggests which simultaneously supports site maps and feeds RSS / ATOM Use search engines to help you understand site updates as soon as possible. Feeds RSS / ATOM can also be very useful for users.
Update page timeout
Never attempt to force search engines to jump to a page of a website by manipulating the last change, unless they have made any changes to its content. This can put a lot of risk for your website.
Not paying attention to settings priority
Some site maps have a column called priority that informs search engines about the priority of pages.
Although this parameter is still supported by Google, there are many doubts about its actual operation. Even Mr. Gary Illyes from Google years ago on Twitter Google announced that it generally ignores this parameter.
Reduce site map file size
The smaller the size of your site map file, the less pressure the server will have.
Google and Bing maximum volume reading Sitemaps support in 2016 from 20 to 50 megabytes have increased. However, it is best to reduce the size of this file and prioritize the site’s main landing pages.
Create multiple site maps
If the number URL Your web site has more than 50,000 you need to build a second site map. Because site maps are limited to this number.
While this number is inaccessible to most sites, there are some large websites that are highly congested. URL requires multiple site maps. For example, large store websites may require additional site designs due to a large number of products.
conclusion:
When the site map is for users, it’s just a plain HTML file with a listing of all the major pages on a site.
In the context of search engines, the site map, also known as a sitemap.xml file, helps search engine crawlers index all pages on the site. While a site map does not guarantee that every page of a site will be crawled, major search engines recommend them.
Site maps are especially important for sites that use Adobe Flash or JavaScript menus that do not include HTML links. Google introduced Google Sitemaps to help Web crawlers find dynamic pages, which were typically being missed. Bing and all other search engines also support this protocol.
Effective SEO involves a lot more than just using keywords on your website. It also requires providing search engines like Google with all the information they need to make sense of your content.
Creating a sitemap is one of the simplest and best ways to do that. This list of pages will tell search engine crawlers (Crawl Budget) everything they need to know about your site’s pages and structure. As we’ve seen, you can easily build a sitemap using an online generator. Then you’ll simply need to upload it to your site and add it to Google Search Console to speed up the crawling process.
we give you 13 practical solutions for site map optimization. If you’re ready for your website to get indexed faster by search engines, just follow these 13 easy steps to reach a site map optimization.
