What is a sitemap? Website sitemaps explained

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on a website. This guides search engines to determine which pages to include in their index.

Having a sitemap is an important part of SEO. Sitemaps help Google discover your pages faster and more efficiently.

Types of website sitemaps

There are two types of sitemaps:

• XML sitemaps: sitemaps written in a specific format designed for search engine crawlers
• HTML sitemaps: sitemaps that look like regular pages and help users navigate the site

Let’s take a closer look at each of these two types.

XML sitemaps

XML sitemaps are the preferred format of sitemaps for search engines, such as Google.

They carry three primary types of information for search engines:

1. The list of all the URLs you want indexed
2. The “lastmod” attribute that informs when the URLs were last updated
3. The “hreflang” attribute which informs about the local variants of the URLs

They look something like this:

XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. This is a format that makes it easy for search engine crawlers to read a sitemap.

Google says sitemaps are suitable for large websites, websites with extensive archives, or new websites with few links.

However, every website can benefit from an XML sitemap. There are really no downsides to having one. And it only takes a few minutes to create one.

If you want to learn more about XML sitemaps, here are some further resources:

HTML sitemaps

HTML sitemaps used to be a popular way to...