A Sitemap is a kind of file that gives information regarding a page, URLs, and many other files available on a website. The main role of this tool is to identify and report the crawler which page is crucial on a website.
A sitemap is basically a link between the search engine and the website. The sitemap is a modus for the webmaster to report search Engines that their sites are all prepared for crawling. Let’s make it easier to understand for you.
Types of Sitemaps
There are usually mentioned two types of Sitemaps.
- HTML
- XML
HTML Sitemap
HTML Sitemaps are helpful for the users and visitors mostly on your website. Therefore, HTML Sitemap usually helps visitors and users to easily navigate on site.
XML Sitemap
XML works as a tool of both software- and hardware just for collecting and passing over data. A Sitemap is an XML File that collects many URLs for a specific site with important metadata of each URL for the help of search engine to easily crawl the data.
XML Sitemaps are divided into four types.
- Image
- Video
- News
- Mobile
Image Sitemap
An Image Sitemap is as its name indicates for images. You can use Image Sitemap to make your image featured on search engines like Google Images. The information obtained from Image Sitemaps usually helps the search engine to discover images that are reached by javascript code and help to crawl the images you want Google for crawling.
<image:image> is important tag for an Image Sitemap.
Video Sitemap
Just like An Image Sitemap works on Crawling an image in your website, A Video Sitemap helps search engines to crawl videos as well. It helps Search Engine Bots to better understand the content of the video and crawl better. Google Video Sitemap gives the description and information about Metadata about A video content. Google video Sites has most of the traffic and owns the highest search ranking on the web.
A video Sitemap Owner can inform The search Engine about the category, description, Title and play time and also give details about targeted audience for every video available on the site.
News Sitemap
A news Sitemaps are only for News Websites or we can say it is necessary for news websites. A news site can not consider the articles that have been posted prior 2 or more days. There is the limit of URLs also. News Sitemap can not post more than 1000 URLs. In case if there are more than 1000 URLs posted in a news Sitemap, try to make parts of these URLs into other multiple Sitemaps and try to use a Sitemap Indexing File.
It helps an article to be featured on news feed on Google Search Engine Result Page.
Mobile Sitemap
When you format a specific version designed for some Mobile Devices, then only a Mobile Sitemap is required.
Web Crawler
Web Crawlers search pages from links on the same site or from other sites. Sitemaps complete this data for permitting those crawlers who usually help sitemaps to collect all the URLs in the Sitemap and understand those URLs from given Metadata.
It is not guaranteed that if you are using Sitemap, the web pages will also be included with search Engines. Since some hints are provided for Web Crawlers for better crawling of the sites.
IMPORTANCE OF SITEMAP
A well-structured site will help any search engine to fetch the data easily and give advantage to users as well in getting required results according to their search while looking for a specific keyword related or associated with the site.
Since there are different types of tools and tricks to optimize your site in search engines, so is this. However, the importance of Sitemaps remains unseen a lot of times. As there is a hint in the name of Sitemaps, it is a map to the sites. It is like in a part of the site, you will make the structure of that particular site visible and from another side, you show the links between these two “the Structure and the Map”.
Navigation
A Sitemap makes the navigation of your site easy. Also, you do not need to update your site, this tool will do it for you automatically. It is good for you as well as the search engines.
Sitemaps are a necessity for a webpage, it not only communicate with bots but also tells which part of the website need indexing and which is not. Web sitemaps navigate search engines, in which part to go for indexing.
Is Sitemapping New Concept?
Sitemaps are not a new part of web design’s related work. While It is always taken into consideration at the time of optimizing a website on search Engines.
It is more vital to design Sitemaps correctly. Moreover, It is necessary to inform you that if your interest is in Sitemaps just because of the Search Engine prospectus, You can not go further only with traditional sitemaps.
There is a basic format of Sitemaps called, HTML. It is used mostly in site optimization. Many search engines use different Sitemaps. Such as Google use the XML format.
Isn’t is a curious question that why Sitemaps are important?
Some Sitemaps are useful for crawlers to understand the content and few for humans to understand the concept of the content written on the website. Having both the Sitemap is same thing.
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Benefits Of Using Sitemaps
A Sitemap provides you with better visibility to your website. It not only just helps in better navigation but also having so many benefits. Since, You can not make changes on your website quickly with the help of this, it takes time to optimize the website. But if somehow you made any changes quicker than it changes actually, the Search Engine will probably edit the changes made on your website.
However, when a Website is linked with Sitemap and it is relying on the search engines, you will be dependent on the out bond links to bring visitors to your Website. However, The sitemap also works on the internal linking of your Website, to male it better.
Is Sitemap helpful for New Website?
Is your Website new or consists of new pages or a number of updated pages, It is very important to use Sitemap on your Website. It will help your site to be created successfully. Since it is also possible to continue without it. It is unavoidable to make this a parameter for the submission of your site on search engines. The crawler will index the internet.
Sitemaps classify the content of the website by the search engine and never ever compel to classify a page that belongs to a specific category or a keyword match as the owner of the Website informed them so. The Sitemap is useful for your website in an ethical way, Try it for your New Website.
Always take the fact into consideration that the program produced by a major Search Engine are evergreen. The search engine improves the algorithm of indexing on sitemaps. There is an expectation of indexing websites quickly by Sitemaps.
Submitting a Sitemap
Creating your own sitemap is not a big task, you can make your Own Sitemap by any Sitemap Generator tool. Once your Sitemap is created, it needs to be linked with your Website. After Uploading the Sitemap Inform Google that it exists. While notifying Google, it needs to update your Sitemap Account to Google Sitemap Account. Make sure you have an account with Google and if not, create one.
There is more necessary information about Sitemap. You need to clear the verification of being the owner of the existing account, before adding the Sitemaps to your account. You need to do this before setting up your Existing or the newly created account.
Panda Update for Duplicate Content
As it is clear that according to Google Webmaster’s guidelines, Anyone can not upload plagiarised content on their websites. Doing this is a punishable offence. For every single website, that provides syndicated content or other content, This place is not right for them.
This was the time when Panda Update was launched. According to the Panda algorithm, all the copied or plagiarized content must be deleted from the website. This clearly means that the website is not the real owner of the content. And the Website can be penalized for showing such duplicate content.
XML Sitemaps are one of such tools that may help content writers to make themselves the generator of particular content. Therefore, It is about how true or accurate a Sitemap could be while showing the content Ownership.
All in one thing is, do not ever try to rank your website through plagiarised content. It is not just the way to make your page rank higher. Instead, do lots of word on your content, website and make it worth reading by your own effort. Who knows, maybe your ideas are unique and make a difference like no one can ever think like.
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