With thousands of searches and increasing internet traffic, brands need to use as many SEO hacks as possible to ensure a good ranking. An XML sitemap is one such quick-to-implement technique that can significantly improve your SEO results. To create a sitemap, you must first understand what it is and the benefits it offers.
An XML Sitemap
A sitemap is a list of all the pages on your website. Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a way to display data on a website. In reality, you could easily learn how to create an XML sitemap in just a few minutes.
What is a Sitemap?
Site crawlers are used by search engines like Google to organize online data and display the most relevant results for a given search query. An XML sitemap helps search engine crawlers read your content and index your pages. As a result, your website’s SEO ranking improves, leading to increased visibility.
Learning how to create a Google sitemap can help you increase traffic to your website. It not only informs search engine crawlers about the relevance and priority ranking of pages within the site, but also about the frequency of updates and when a page was last uploaded. Without a sitemap, your website may be deemed duplicate, lowering your SEO ranking.
Why the use of a Sitemap?
A sitemap is the answer if you want to improve your SEO rankings. An XML sitemap not only improves your SEO but also has many other advantages, some of which are listed below.
- An XML sitemap helps Google crawl your site faster.
- A sitemap helps crawlers find and index all pages on your site, even deep pages that search engines might miss.
- It tells Google about your website’s content, when it was last updated, and how often it is updated.
- It improves website indexation.
How to Create a Sitemap Using Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a desktop program for creating sitemaps. It has lots of SEO tools and lets you crawl up to 500 pages for free. If your website has more than 500 pages, you will need to upgrade to Screaming Frog Pro. The steps to create a sitemap using Screaming Frog’s free version are listed below.
- First, install Screaming Frog.
- Open Screaming Frog and type your website’s URL in the search bar at the top of the page.
- Next, click “Start” to begin the crawling process. The crawl bar will turn green once the crawling is finished. If your website is small, the crawling process will be quick. Large websites will take longer.
- Next, select “XML Sitemap” from the menu bar.
- Select the sections of your website you want to include in the XML sitemap.
- Select “Include Images” from the “Images” tab. The third box, “Include only relevant Images…”, will be checked.
- Next, choose a safe location to save your XML sitemap and click “Save”.
That’s it. You’ve successfully created an XML sitemap. But there’s more to do. Upload your sitemap to your website and Google.
How to Upload the XML Sitemap to Your Website
You can upload your sitemap to your website in two ways. You can use a cPanel File Manager or an FTP client to upload it. These are the steps to upload your XML sitemap using the former.
- Enter your cPanel and select “File Manager”.
- Select “public _html” from the dashboard.
- Click “Upload” in the top bar.
- Then click “Browse” to upload your sitemap to cPanel.
You’re done. You have successfully uploaded your XML sitemap. All that remains is to submit your sitemap to Google.
How to Submit Your XML Sitemap to Google
Connect Google Console Search to your website to submit your XML sitemap to Google. After that, follow the steps outlined below. These steps will help you submit your sitemap to Google.
- First, sign up for Google Search Console and select your website.
- Next, select “Add a new Sitemap” from the menu bar.
- Input your XML sitemap URL and click “Submit”.
After that, Google will notify you of your sitemap’s status. If it is accepted, the status will be “Success” in green.
Congratulations. Finally, you created an XML sitemap, uploaded it to your website, and submitted it to Google.
Creating an XML sitemap is not difficult, despite the term’s technicality. Programs like Screaming Frog and Yoast make the process simple. Even if you have no prior knowledge of sitemaps and are hesitant to create one, do so because it can significantly improve your website’s ranking.