Streamline your Sitemap Process
In simple terms, a sitemap is an index of all the pages of a website. Search Engine spiders crawl pages from your website – a sitemap is a directive for the spiders to let them know about your priority of pages.
Typically, we have 2 types of sitemaps: HTML and XML.
An HTML sitemap is generally linked from the website and in itself is another HTML page. It contains anchor text links to every page of the website. Though it can be handy to Search Engine spiders, it is more useful to the users.
XML sitemap, on the other hand, is an XML file which contains a directive to Search Engines spiders about which pages take priority from a crawling and indexing process, which are determined by the preference of the website owner. From an SEO perspective, an XML sitemap is considered more important, as the top priority pages should have the most relevant and optimized content regarding the purpose of the website.
The following are the essential elements of an XML sitemap:
- Location – Signifies the exact URL location of the page
- Priority – Signifies the priority of the page on a scale of 0 to 1 with 1 being the highest
- Frequency – Signifies the frequency at which the webmaster would prefer the crawl; it could be hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.
- LastMod Date – Provides the date when the content was last updated in the web page
For businesses who would want to take care of these technicalities on their own, LXRMarketplace’s SEO Sitemap Builder tool comes up as a one stop solution. It can generate a custom sitemap for your website and deliver it straight into your inbox.
Indexing your Website
Using the tool couldn’t be simpler. All you need to do is follow these simple steps:
- Insert the URL of your website
- Select Frequency
- Select the LastMod date (you can either manually put a date or automate it to fetch the server time)
- Set the priority
You would be asked to share your email ID to receive a copy of the XML sitemap you created. You can customize the file further, if required. In a nutshell, the SEO Sitemap Builder tool is handy for businesses and site maintenance because it equips owners with an XML file with little effort on their part.
It is important to put a mention of the XML sitemap in your Robots.txt file so that Search Engine spiders are able to find it more conveniently. Sitemap.xml is an essential file to enhance the crawling and indexing of important pages of your website, thus increasing your Search Engine visibility.
Build out your sitemap today.Be sure to follow #ToolThursday for a compilation of our weekly tool releases.
