XML Sitemap

As the name suggests, the XML sitemap is a map that directs the visitors to the important pages of a website and makes sure that they are accessible to Google. An XML sitemap speeds up the process of content discovery by helping search engines like Google to get a better understanding of your website. 

A better understanding means that Google can access and find every important page on your website even though the internal links within the pages are missing, XML sitemap overcomes this flaw and fastens the content discovery process. 

For example, if you are an owner of a massive website that sells a wide variety of products then you can add up to 50,000 URLs to one XML sitemap. But in case your URLs exceed this number then you can split the sitemap,i.e you can use a second sitemap for the same. The lower the limit of holding URLs of an XML sitemap, the faster is their discovery via the search engine.

Majorly, XML sitemaps are used by very large websites or websites that have large archives or new websites that have only a few external links on them. Websites that have diverse media content also make use of XML sitemaps. However, an XML sitemap for your small website won’t do any harm; rather it would benefit your website by helping Google to discover the most important pages on your website easily. So, any website be it small or big can make use of an XML sitemap. 

While creating an XML sitemap, figuring out which pages of our website should be added to the map can be a hard task on your plate. Imagine you have started a new blog on your website, then you will want Google to find the blogs that you have recently posted on your website so that they can reach a wide audience. You will want Google to show the URL to your blog in the search results and that is where the use of XML sitemap comes into play. While creating the XML sitemap you will want to start from the blogs that you have recently posted i.e you can add the recent posts and some tags to the map, to begin with. However, the URLs to the posts that you want Google to show in search results have to be tagged as ‘noindex’.