Does Your Website Need a Sitemap?

You know your website needs effective on-page and off-page SEO to compete against the other 2 billion websites. But have you thought about your website sitemap? Website structure and site mapping are hallmarks of effective SEO.

This guide takes you from zero to hero about why website sitemaps are vital for search engines.

And if you enjoy successful organic web traffic, this article is also for you. Website sitemaps are often overlooked for SEO best practices. Your website deserves the maximum traffic, so take the first step and read this website structure article.

What Is a Website Sitemap?

Some websites are single-page, while others might only have a couple of pages. However, a site like yours might be complex, with dozens to thousands of pages. A website sitemap provides proper site mapping for search engines to index.

Site mapping instructs search engines like Google about which web pages need indexing. You can also specify which pages get priority or which pages search engines shouldn’t index.

When you submit your website sitemap, search engines may be prompted to crawl your website. This instructs search engines on your web page contents, updates, languages, and website structure.

XML sitemaps are the most common, but there are other types of sitemaps. Here’s a quick rundown on the common website sitemaps.

XML Sitemaps

These help search engines analyze your website structure’s metadata for indexing. XML sitemaps also help identify problems with your website structure. Search engines like Bing webmaster tools and Google alert you to the errors and how to fix them.

Video Sitemaps

Video sitemaps work with XML to provide extra details about your videos to search engines. These website sitemaps help search engines discover this content because sometimes SERPs, like Google, don’t always discover videos. You can make a separate video sitemap or build it in your current XML sitemaps.

News Sitemaps

A news website sitemap is in order if you operate an online news publication. SEO best practices for news content sites are to update the sitemap with new articles. Also, news website sitemaps shouldn’t surpass 1,000 URLs.

Other Benefits of Website Sitemaps

Website sitemaps map your website’s URLs and SEO best practices call for your web pages to interlink with each other.

Bad website structure, like duplicate pages and or unlinked pages (called orphan pages), doesn’t make for the SEO best practices. However, you can count on us for best SEO practices.

Frequent blogging and podcasting make for SEO best practices.

More About a Website Sitemap

At DG Studio, we know that it takes time to market your website online. This is why we offer superb website design and development for your website. Our dedicated web professionals work with you on each step of a web page design to communicate your message.

We enhance your brand’s web design with SEO best practices with the right website structure. Our digital services, headquartered in the Los Angeles area are second to none. Don’t hesitate to contact us about your sitemap or SEO needs. Our headquarters is on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles and we work with companies locally as well as all over the country.

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Artykuly

7 months ago

I have this question. Should the sitemap be with all its content, or is it enough for the latest content to be available on it? Let’s say the map has the 500 most recent publications. However, should all of them be available on the website visible to users? Does it matter?

DG Studio

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Reply to Artykuly

7 months ago

You’ll want your sitemap to have every single page/post on your website. If you’re running a WordPress website its pretty simple to use a plugin like Yoast SEO to automatically create an XML sitemap which search engines can find/read simply.