SEO
, short for
search engine
optimization, is a
digital marketing
strategy that focuses on improving a website’s ranking in search results on search engines such as Google and Yahoo!. One of the important things when creating a website with SEO in mind is a sitemap.
A well-designed site is a navigation tool that helps search engines discover your website and helps users find information quickly.
This time, we will introduce the characteristics of sitemaps, which play an important role in SEO, how they work, and their relationship with SEO.
What is a site map?
A sitemap is a “map of your entire site” designed to help both users and search engines support your website. It is necessary to list the contents of your website and design it in a way that makes it easy for search engines such as Google and site visitors to understand the content.
Search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing use
bots
called crawlers to find various pages on a site from a site map. Without a sitemap, search engines will focus on low-priority pages and run the risk of missing high-priority pages.
Also, by creating a sitemap, it becomes easier to understand the overall structure of the site. There are also benefits when working with multiple people, such as making it easier for everyone to have a common understanding.
Importance of sitemap
One of the main importances of having a sitemap is to support your SEO strategy. Search engines use crawlers called bots and spiders to examine websites, index them, and learn more about the content on the pages. By providing sitemap information to this crawler, you can support quick index creation. This makes it easier for crawlers to display your content when users search for your keywords. Sitemaps are especially important for websites that use Adobe Flash or Java Script and do not contain HTML links.
Google creates Google sitemaps to help crawlers find dynamic pages such as videos that are easy to miss. Bing and other search engines also support this protocol, which shows its importance.
Sitemaps are also important not only for search engines, but also for users looking for specific pages on your website. Internal links in particular are powerful for SEO, and by making it easier for website visitors to click on your site’s pages, they can also have the effect of increasing the amount of time they spend on your site.
Therefore, sitemaps are useful for both search engines and users.
What is SEO?
I will briefly explain SEO, which was mentioned above.
SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization, and it refers to making organic search result web pages, which are pure search results without advertisements, easier to search than other sites.
Search engines such as Google use crawlers to collect information about content posted on the Internet. Crawlers start from a known web page and follow internal links to pages within that site and external links to pages on other sites.
When a user types a keyword into the search box, the search engine uses a complex algorithm to display the most relevant information for that keyword. By smoothing the flow and improving the relevance and usability of your website, we improve your ranking in search results on search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.
By optimizing the information on your website to make it easier for search engines such as Google to understand it and taking measures to rank it higher, you can increase the number of accesses and attract customers without advertising. There are benefits.
Types of sitemaps
There are two types of sitemap file formats:
HTML
files created for users and XML files created for search engines. An HTML sitemap is a sitemap that can be viewed by your site visitors and helps them navigate specific pages.
An xml sitemap can be said to be a search engine-specific sitemap that can only be understood by search engines.
Although the two have different characteristics, both are recommended, and the current method of creating two types of sitemaps is also recommended.
HTML file
An HTML sitemap is a file that helps users navigate. By directing site visitors to your sitemap, you can help them find hidden topics. Site creators can also create better sites by organizing their sites and visualizing information, and show search engines that they are user-first.
xml file
An xml sitemap helps search engines discover pages on the web. This is an xml sitemap of pages that can be read by search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. You can list your site’s URLs and post information about each page on your site to help search engine crawlers better navigate and index your site.
Creation procedure using Sitemat recommended tools
HTML sitemap
There are two ways to create an HTML sitemap: manual input and the use of plugins.
Here, we will introduce a simple procedure for creating one using the
WordPress
plugin Ps Auto Sitemap.
HTML sitemap creation procedure
① Add Ps Auto Sitemap as a new plugin from WordPress and enable it.
②Creating a fixed page
Ps Auto Sitemap is required for the static page settings that will be performed later. Once the installation is complete, first create a static page.
- Click Create New from the fixed page.
- Enter sitemap in the title and sitemap in the URL slug.
- When entering the text, click Custom HTML from the + mark. At that time, switch to text editing mode and type.
- In the custom HTML block, type <!– SITEMAP CONTENT REPLACE POINT –>.
- After entering the information, click Publish and you’re done.
③ From the settings screen, click Ps Auto Sitemap and configure various settings. There are two main areas that need to be changed.
- Uncheck the output button on the home page.
- Enter the ID of the fixed page you created earlier in the column of the article for which you want to output the sitemap.
Click ➃Save changes to complete the settings.
xml sitemap
There are two ways to create an xml sitemap: like an HTML sitemap, you can enter it manually, or you can create it using a plugin or automatic creation tool. However, it is difficult to create it manually if you are not an engineer or have no knowledge. Here we will introduce a simple procedure for creating one using the WordPress plugin XML Sitemaps.
xml sitemap creation procedure
① Add new xml Sitemaps from the WordPress plugin, install it now, and activate it.
② From the settings screen, click xml Sitemaps and configure various settings.
③Basic settings
- Update notifications: Check all three.
- Advanced settings: default
➃Additional Pages
If you have additional pages, add them here.
⑤ Post priority You can decide how often the crawler crawls. Basically, there is no problem if you check “Do not automatically calculate priority”.
⑥Sitemap content
Select the content to include in your xml sitemap. For general blogs, there are no problems with the following three locations: “Home page,” “Include posts (individual articles),” and “Include fixed pages.”
⑦Excluded Items
Set the items to be excluded in the xml sitemap.
⑧Change Frequencies
This is a setting for update frequency.
⑨Priority setting (priority)
Basically, there is no problem with leaving the default settings.
Google displays legitimate URLs: Only include legitimate URLs in the sitemap, taking care to avoid typos. If you make a mistake, there is a risk that it will not be reflected well in the search results, so please be careful.
Add to Google Search Console
Even if you create a sitemap, there is no point if it is not recognized by Google and crawlers do not visit it. By registering with Google Search Console, Google will recognize your website and crawlers will visit it.
Registration procedure ① Register in Google Search Console ② Click on site map ③ Add new site map ➃ Submit and complete
Mobile and desktop versions
Search has become more familiar in recent years due to the spread of smartphones, but you need to be careful if you want to include both the desktop and mobile versions in your XML sitemap. This is not required if the desktop and mobile versions have the same URL, but if they are different then one of the URLs must be linked.
If you want to link both, paste a tag called an annotation in the URL that points to the rel=”alternate” computer page to the mobile URL as shown below.
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″
xmlns:xhtml=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/page-1/</loc>
<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” media=”only screen and (max-width: 640px)”
href=”http://m.example.com/page-1″ />
</url>
</urlset>
Citation:
Separate URLs | Search Central | Google Developers
You should be careful about typos and include only legitimate URLs in your sitemap. If you make a mistake, there is a risk that it will not be reflected well in the search results, so please be careful.
summary
Sitemaps are important for your website. If your site is not ranked high when searched using a search engine, your site will not be found or seen. Therefore, SEO can be said to be essential. Sitemaps for search engines such as Google do not seem to have a direct effect on SEO, but they can be expected to have an indirect SEO effect by helping people understand the content. Do proper SEO and create content that can be found in searches.