What is a sitemap? The role of sitemaps in SEO

What is a sitemap?

Sitemap (sitemap) is a detailed map of the site, helping search engines find, crawl and index all the site content. The sitemap also tells search engines which page is most important on your website.

What types of sitemaps are there?

There are 4 main types of sitemap:

1. Regular XML sitemap: This is the most common type of sitemap. It is usually in the form of an XML sitemap that links to different pages on the site.
2. Video Sitemap : Used specifically to help Google understand video content on websites.

1. News Sitemap : Help Google find content on sites approved for Google News.
2. Image Sitemap : Help Google find all images hosted on the site.

Why is a sitemap important?

Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing use sitemaps to find different pages on the site.

Google says: 'If the pages on your website are linked correctly, Google's web crawler can explore most websites.'

In other words, you probably don't need a sitemap. But it certainly does not affect your SEO efforts. Therefore, their use also makes certain sense.

There are also a few special cases when a sitemap is really useful.

For example, Google primarily finds websites through links. If your site is completely new and only has some external backlinks, then the sitemap is great for helping Google find pages on your website.

Or maybe you run an ecommerce site with 5 million pages. Unless you put the internal links perfectly and have lots of external links, Google will have trouble finding all those pages. That is when the sitemap develops its role.