What exactly are sitemaps? According to Google Search Central, a sitemap is a file where you provide information about pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationship between them. The search engine will read this file in order to crawl your site more efficiently. Sitemaps allow search engines to know which pages and files are important on your site and will provide vulnerable information about these files.
Sitemaps are able to provide information about different and specific types of content that is on your page. Some of those types of content include:
- Videos (running time, rating, and age-appropriateness rating)
- Images (location of the image)
- News (article title and publication date)
When would you need a sitemap? (Google Search Central)
A sitemap could come in handy when you have a larger site. When pages are larger, it can be more difficult to make sure that every page is linked to at least one other page on that site. If your site is new and has a few external links, it can be difficult for crawlers to crawl the web by accessing URLs found in previously crawled pages. Finally, if your site contains a lot of rich media content such as videos or images, a sitemap may be beneficial to have. Generally, the sitemap has crawlers such as Googlebot discover your new and old pages.
When would you not need a sitemap? (Google Search Central)
A site map may not be necessary if you have a smaller site. A smaller site would be about 500 pages or fewer on your site. If your site is comprehensively linked internally, then crawlers can find the important pages on your site generally pretty easily, making a sitemap not necessary. Finally, if your site does not consist of many media files such as videos or images, a sitemap would not be necessary if you do not need those results to appear in search.
Information from above can be found at What Is a Sitemap | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google for Developers
6 Responses
It’s a really nice blog about sitemaps and their importance to the SEO process. Great job.
I found your information about when a sitemap is not necessary helpful. I was wondering which situations required website owners to have a sitemap and which ones did not need one.
I would love to see an example of what a site map looks like, because in my mind it is similar to a treasure map, being very visual with clear linking structures from page to page, and while this would be helpful for a human viewer, it might not necessarily help the bot crawl the site. Although in some ways, I guess a site map is similar to a treasure map, in that it helps the bot find what it is looking for, and get there properly.
I always adore your posts. Thank you for explaining sitemaps more I have a new understanding of them. I enjoyed reading your post!
Nice summary, I didn’t realize how helpful sitemaps could be for sites with lots of media or newer pages. Definitely a smart move for making sure important content doesn’t get overlooked by search engines.
This was a super clear explanation—thanks for breaking it down! I didn’t realize how much more helpful sitemaps can be for large or media-heavy sites. It makes sense now why they’re important for helping search engines prioritize content, especially when internal links aren’t enough.