What are XML Sitemaps and their importance in boosting SEO?

We live in an online world where everyone creates a compelling digital presence with their website or blog. However, in order for your site to be visible in search results, you need to help search engine bots understand your page mapping and crawl priority, especially for large sites that span thousands of pages. And this is where an XML sitemap plays an important role.

XML Sitemap – What is it & Why is it needed?

An XML Sitemap is a text file containing the indexable URLs on a website and houses a comprehensive list of all web pages that are meant for search engines to crawl. It is presented in Extensible Markup Language (XML) format that is web-friendly and easy for web crawlers to read the website.

A sitemap primarily helps search engines find relevant pages on your website and index them. They also help crawl bots understand the structure of your website. If you have a large website or do not possess an internal linking strategy, then the XML sitemap enables all the pages to be discoverable, including the orphaned pages as well.

It is highly recommended to use XML sitemaps, especially for large websites, including multilingual websites, otherwise these websites will take much longer to be crawled and indexed by search engines, which may adversely affect your SEO performance.

Benefits of an XML Sitemap for SEO

• It tells search engines to crawl and index your website effectively.
• It informs search engines what kind of information is on your website and when it is updated.
• It helps to enhance rankings.
• It helps to organize large sites.
• It determines areas to improve website navigation
• It helps your website instantly gain indexation for dynamically-generated pages.
• It helps you to strengthen internal linking.
• It helps you to find internal linking opportunities.
• It shows all the pages on your site, even if they are deep within the website architecture.

Types of XML sitemap

Depending on your business requirements and SEO strategy, you can leverage various XML sitemaps.

Image sitemap – Used for images to get featured on Google Image Search.
Video sitemap – Used for videos to get featured in Google Video Search. It helps search bots understand the video content better.
News sitemap – Used for news to get featured in Google SERPs and cannot have more than 1000 URLs. Also, it cannot house news articles published two days ago.

Best practices for optimizing an XML sitemap for SEO

Today, Search engine optimization (SEO) is not enough for a website to rank high in search engines and gain visibility to create a digital presence. Search engines like Google or Bing crawl a website and check for relevant meta-tags, and .txt files, alongside other data that can be relevant in guiding the rating of the importance of the content. Here are the recommended practices for optimizing sitemaps.

Generate XML sitemaps automatically

Sitemaps can be generated automatically (through plug-ins) or manually (by copy-pasting each URL on the website into a .txt or .xml file). However, It is highly recommended to create sitemaps automatically as manual creation can be erroneous and time-consuming. However, ensuring compatibility is recommended as it should be able to integrate different plugins.

Include relevant pages in your sitemap

To optimize sitemap SEO, include the pages with relevant URLs in the sitemap. This ensures visibility and provides value to the visitors.

Avoid Noindex pages

Refrain from adding Noindex pages to your XML sitemap as they can include utility pages on your site that may be useful on the site but not to search engines. Pages should only appear on your sitemap because you want them indexed.

Frequency of optimizing

Sitemaps require regular updation, albeit with a difference. For example, news or an e-commerce website needs constant attention and daily optimization. Similarly, a bakery website may need to optimize monthly as product pages changes. Hence, it is important to focus on the frequency of sitemap updation needed to get traffic to your website.

Remove duplicate pages

Duplicate pages create confusion as they hinder search engines from actually indexing the intended pages. Hence, ensure unique and quality content is displayed on your website.

Exclude Redirects

XML sitemaps should include published URLs only. If you delete a URL or use a 301 redirect, then make sure to remove that URL from your sitemap file.

Use Location tag

The Location tag is a compulsory tag that contains the absolute version of the URL location. It should reflect your site protocol (HTTPS) and if you have chosen to include or exclude the ‘www’. Moreover, by using the hreflang attribute to indicate the language and region variants for each URL, you reduce the page load time and gain user trust.

Use the Lastmod (Last Modified) tag

Using the Lastmod tag is highly recommended as it helps to communicate the page’s last modified date and time. This also shows how often you update your site to remain relevant.

Put  markups

XML sitemaps follows markup rules. Once the markups are ready to go, an XML sitemap is generated without errors. However, check more frequently to avoid inaccurate results, old links, etc.

Maintain a low file size

Though the permissible limit is high, it is still considered good practice to not expand the file size of your sitemap as it will put unnecessary strain on your server.

Send your sitemap to search engines

Promote your XML sitemap by submitting it to Google’s and Bing’s webmaster tools sites to speed up and ensure seamless indexation. Before submitting it, double-check your sitemap content to ensure they are devoid of any errors. Google accepts sitemap submissions with a maximum size of 50 MB and the maximum number of URLs is limited to 50,000. If you have a larger file or more URLs, then you can split it into several sitemaps.

Creating an XML Sitemap - Things to Keep in mind

• Include hreflang tagsUse dynamically generated XML sitemaps as they update automatically.
• Include relevant tags like the and tags
• URLs should be maximum of 2,048 characters long.
• Compress sitemap files
• Include SEO-relevant pages in XML sitemaps
• Fix errors and warnings

Final Reflections

XML sitemaps can prove helpful in improving your search rankings and refining your website's user interface. However, the most important thing is to choose the right XML sitemap generator tool that will help you or your SEO team to create an error-free sitemap. With an XML sitemap generator like HREFLang optimizer, you can not only automate the creation and updating of your sitemap, but also overcome the many challenges of international search engine optimization with HREFLang tags and multilingual sitemap generator feature. If you have a smaller website, you can easily create XML sitemaps with this tool and perform your SEO audits in no time. The new era of digital marketing allows you to track and monitor all the metrics of your website. To improve your digital presence, hire a smart digital marketing team to create a robust XML sitemap for your website. Happy site mapping!