What is Sitemap?
A Sitemap is a file where information about pages, videos and other files on your site, and they are connected to each other. Google Search Engine reads this file to crawl your site.
A sitemap tells Google which pages and files you think are important in your site, and also provides valuable information about these files. For example, for pages, last updated page, frequency of pages on the page.
Importance of Sitemap?
A Sitemap is a realistic representation of your website, that is, on one page you would show the structure of the site, the sections in it, the links between those, etc. Sitemaps make navigating the website easier, and when you have an updated sitemap for your website it is good not only for yourself but search engines as well. Sitemaps are a very important way for a website to communicate with a search engine. Robots (.txt) tells a search engine which part of the website to not include for indexing, and the web sitemap tells these search engines where you’d like them to go.
Types of Sitemaps.
There are two types of sitemaps which are generally used in websites.
HTML sitemap (Hypertext Mark-up Language)
XML sitemap (Extensible Mark-up Language)
XML Sitemaps can have two types.
Index Sitemap (how many URL sitemaps a website have)
URL Sitemap (contain final information of URLs on webpage)
XML sitemaps are further divided into 3 different categories.
Sitemaps for webpages (commonly known as xml sitemap in community)
Image sitemaps (details of images and their URLs on website)
Video sitemaps (what webpages have videos embedded in them and their details)
What is an HTML Sitemap?
HTML sitemap, as stated above, is a map that contains information about website resources and their location. These sitemaps are primarily for users to assist them to find their desired item on website or to explore a website easily. Let’s take an example:
A website has thousands of webpages categorized in different sections in form of directories. Now with this massive quantity of webpages user can feel himself at nowhere when he lands on such website. The first thing that can assist him is search option. But if he has no luck then HTML sitemap is the last resort for him where he can explore the website.
Secondly, as HTML sitemap links the resources internally and internal links help in improving keyword rankings; these sitemaps also help linked webpages in their rankings with search engines.
What are XML Sitemaps?
XML is basically a language that store information about an object in organized or pre-defined format. This format is not understandable by humans but search engines do understand what is written in it and the purpose of writing. So, we can say that;
XML sitemaps are primarily for search engines to have a map of internal/external resources of the website with their information. Fast and secure indexing of the website by search engines relies on these sitemaps.