In the ever-evolving world of SEO, what was considered best practice yesterday does not necessarily hold true today, and this is especially relevant when it comes to XML sitemaps. These essential elements of SEO are almost as old as the practice itself. Yet, sorting valuable advice from widespread misinformation on forums and social media about how to optimize XML sitemaps properly can be incredibly time-consuming. While most website owners and administrators recognize the importance of submitting sitemaps to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, as well as in the robots.txt file for faster content discovery and more efficient crawling, the finer details of implementing sitemaps to improve SEO performance are often overlooked or misunderstood. This guide will dive into current best practices for optimizing XML sitemaps to enhance your website’s SEO performance.
Define an XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap is essentially a file listing all of your website’s URLs, acting as a roadmap to inform search engine crawlers and indexing platforms about the content available on your site and how to reach it. This efficiency is crucial, especially for websites with thousands of pages, frequent updates, weak internal linking, or pages that are difficult to find through internal site navigation. Although search engines could theoretically discover your URLs without an XML sitemap, including them in a sitemap enhances your chances of faster crawling and indexing. This pivotal role of XML sitemaps underscores the importance of ensuring their proper use, as they make it easier for crawlers to find and index the most important and high-quality landing pages on your site.
Generate a Sitemap
Creating an XML sitemap can be done in two primary ways: through static sitemaps that require manual updates or dynamic sitemaps that update automatically. Static sitemaps, which can be created using tools like Screaming Frog, are straightforward but become outdated as soon as any changes occur on your website. For websites with frequent updates, manually maintaining static sitemaps can be incredibly labor-intensive. On the other hand, dynamic XML sitemaps are updated in real-time or by regular cron jobs, reflecting changes on your website without manual intervention. To create a dynamic XML sitemap, you can request your developer to code a custom script with clear specifications, use a dynamic sitemap generator tool, or install a plugin for your content management system (CMS), such as the Yoast plugin for WordPress.
Ensure Proper XML Sitemap Format
Your XML sitemap needs three basic items to introduce itself to indexing platforms effectively: the XML version declaration, UTF-8 encoding, and the specification of the namespace. These elements ensure that the characters used in the sitemap can be understood and that the file conforms to the standards set by sitemaps.org. The core part of an XML sitemap is the URL container for each page. The mandatory “loc” tag contains the absolute, canonical URL location, accurately reflecting your site’s protocol and structure. Additionally, the “lastmod” tag, though optional, is highly recommended as it communicates the date and time of the last significant change to the page. Accurate use of the “lastmod” tag helps indexing platforms prioritize pages with fresh content for crawling. Avoid including the “changefreq” or “priority” tags, as these are now ignored by most search engines.
Identify Types of Sitemaps
There are various types of sitemaps, each serving a distinct purpose. XML sitemap index files help manage large websites by splitting URLs across multiple XML sitemaps when the limits of 50,000 URLs or 50 MB uncompressed file size are exceeded. Image sitemaps, while once essential, are now best replaced with JSON-LD schema.org/ImageObject markup, which offers more attributes. Video sitemaps can be integrated within existing sitemaps but may require a dedicated file if extensive tags are used. Google News sitemaps are specifically for articles published within the last 48 hours, and HTML sitemaps, though aimed at human users, are often redundant in well-structured websites with good internal linking and user experience.
Enhance XML Sitemaps
Enhancing XML sitemaps involves structuring them efficiently and including only SEO-relevant pages. Pages marked for crawling should not include 301 redirect URLs, non-canonical URLs, noindex tags, pages blocked by robots.txt, and other non-SEO-relevant pages. It’s also crucial to ensure that your XML sitemap is valid. The most effective way to validate your sitemap is by submitting it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, which can provide immediate feedback on errors and help you fix and resubmit your sitemap as necessary. You should leverage the reporting features to analyze indexing rates and identify problematic pages. Structuring sitemaps by page type and limiting each to manageable sizes can significantly improve the efficiency of identifying and resolving indexing issues.
XML Sitemap Best Practices Checklist
An XML sitemap is a crucial file for any website, listing all its URLs. It essentially serves as a roadmap, guiding search engine crawlers and indexing platforms to your site’s content and helping them understand how to access it. This functionality is particularly important for websites with a vast number of pages, frequent updates, weak internal linking, or pages that are hard to find through the site’s navigation system.
While search engines can theoretically find your URLs without a sitemap, having an XML sitemap significantly improves your chances of faster crawling and indexing. This is because an XML sitemap provides a clear and organized list of all your site’s pages, making it easier for search engines to locate and prioritize important and high-quality landing pages. By using an XML sitemap, you ensure that search engines are more efficiently and accurately crawling and indexing your site. This can lead to better search engine rankings and increased visibility for your most valuable content. Therefore, it’s vital to properly implement and maintain an XML sitemap, as it plays a pivotal role in your website’s overall SEO strategy. XML sitemaps are indispensable tools that enhance how search engines discover and index your site, ultimately contributing to improved search performance and user accessibility.