What Is A Sitemap (Different Types)
What Is Sitemap Of A Website
Sitemap For Website: A site map is a visual or textual model of the list of web pages of a web site (Content of the website), that allows users and search engine robots to navigate through the website. A site map is just like a geographical map of the website. It helps the web crawler to properly index your website. Sitemap is not a mandatory item like robots.txt file, But is very important.
Sitemap can be either a document or a planning tool for website, where all the pages of the web site are listed. So that whenever a web robots visit your website, it will be easy for him to get all the URL or pages of your website. Once you create a sitemap for your website, then you need to put that on the webmasters of each search engines.
Mobile, Video And Image Sitemap: If your website has a different version for mobile. Then it will be better if you create a separate sitemap for your mobile version of website. You also need to create separate sitemap for the video and images placed on the website. Then only your website content will be properly indexed by the search engine.
Number and Placing Of Sitemap: You can put your sitemap at any place on the website which can be index by the web robot, means the URL of sitemap must not be blocked in the index area of web robot using robots.txt file. You can create any number of sitemap you like. Once you create all the sitemap, just put them on the webmaster tools of each search engine.
Work Of The Sitemap For A Website
Work Of Sitemap: In a sitemap, all the web pages of the website are listed. So whenever a search engine robot comes to crawl your website, then it check your sitemap and get all linked pages of your website. From there it crawl all your web pages and your website is properly indexed. If you don’t put a sitemap, then may be some pages of your website will be not come to the eye of the web crawler and it will be not indexed.
Meta Data of Website: Sitemap also provides the valuable meta data associated with the pages listed in the sitemap. Metadata are the information about the webpages such as when that page was last updated and how often the page is changed. The importance of this is how the page is compared to other web pages of the site in the form of update and recent changes. So, when a web page is recently modified then it will be re-index by the web robot by the help of sitemap meta data.
Why We Need A Sitemap For Our Website
Reason To Use Sitemap: These are some reasons to use the sitemap for a website.
- Large Website: When your website has a large number of pages. Then the search engine will be feel difficulty in crawling all the webpages and the recent updates.
- Web Page Are Isolated: When you have a website with large number of web pages. Then you mostly get some web pages that are isolated and not linked with each other. If any webpage is not linked from any other web page, then search engine bot may find difficulty to get that page. So the use of sitemap will give you a link from the sitemap and web crawler easily get all the web pages, whether they are linked from any other web page or not.
New Website: When a website is new and less link from one page to another. Then robot will feel difficulty in crawling all web pages without sitemap.
Rich Media Content: When a website has rich media content like videos and images, then sitemap will help to provide appropriate search result in serp, by indexing properly.
Different Types Of Sitemap In Website
Types Of Sitemap: Apart from the main site map of the website, website owner also use different sitemap for there rich media content like videos and images and there mobile version website. All the sitemap are created by one of these 3 types.
- XML Sitemap : All the webpages are listed in XML format. It helps the search engines to understand your website.
- HTML Format: All the web pages are listed as a HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) format webpage.
- Text Format: list of all the webpages of the website are written on a text (*.txt) file (one URL on each line) and upload the same to the website.
