Things You Should Know About Sitemaps

Sitemaps are an essential part of SEO. Having one on your website ensures that every page of it will be indexed properly by search engines. Despite that, many site owners neglect to have a sitemap at all, thinking they can do without one. If you don’t think it’s worth creating a sitemap or if you haven’t created one yet, understand the following points.

XML isn’t the only sitemap format

Many people incorrectly think that XML is the only sitemap form. It isn’t. There are many others like the Google News Sitemap, which is used exclusively by the news media.

On top of these two, there is also RSS feeds, which are used by huge content sites that create new content regularly. There is also a thing called an mRSS feed, which is used for video content. Finally, you can even have XML sitemaps in other languages, which are essential if your site is in more than one language.

You’re not supposed to add all URLs

When creating a sitemap, be aware that you don’t need to add every single page of your website to it. You may have duplicate pages, for example, or pages that are hidden behind paywalls or for members only. None of these need to be included in your site map. Neither do your privacy policies your error messages or any other content that is not essential for readers.

Sitemaps don’t always apply for all websites

We may have said that sitemaps are key for SEO, but that doesn’t mean that every website needs one. Yes, if you have a large website or you regularly publish content, you definitely need a sitemap.

That being said, if your site is very small or even on-page, you probably don’t need a sitemap for Google to index it correctly. You may also not need a sitemap if you use a company like Wix to create your site. That’s because they may create a sitemap for you.

While you’ll want to create sitemap to help Google index your site, you don’t need to make it searchable on Google. That means you can use the robot.txt file to keep it hidden and make sure only Google will find it.

You should keep your sitemap private

While you’ll want to create sitemap to help Google index your site, you don’t need to make it searchable on Google. That means you can use the robot.txt file to keep it hidden and make sure only Google will find it.

If your website is large and very content heavy, it can be a real advantage keeping your sitemap private. A cool trick to achieve this is to change the URL of your sitemap from the default setting of /sitemap.xml. Of course, remember to resubmit your new sitemap location to Google so that it knows where to look.

Know the limits

Sitemaps can’t be as big as you like. They shouldn’t have more than 50,000 URLS, for instance, and they can’t be bigger than 50MB. Most sites will never have to worry about this. But if your site is that large, then you are allowed to split your sitemap into two sitemaps. There is also a limit of 500 sitemaps to Google, but again this isn’t something you have to worry about.