![]() So, while you should absolutely use a sitemap, you shouldn’t solely rely on a sitemap to get your content indexed. As Google says, “Using a sitemap doesn’t guarantee that all the items in your sitemap will be crawled and indexed.” Google still wants to see that your content has internal or external links pointing towards it. That is, don’t assume that search engines will index your content simply because you included it in your sitemap. While a sitemap is beneficial, here’s what it’s not: It’s not a replacement for creating a solid internal link structure, which among other things, increases your chances to get Google sitelinks also. ![]() Creating an XML sitemap will never hurt your site.ĭon’t believe me? Here’s what Google itself says on the topic: “in most cases, your site will benefit from having a sitemap, and you’ll never be penalized for having one.” A Sitemap Doesn’t Mean You Can Ignore Internal Link Structure, Though The worst case scenario is that you don’t see any positive results. Assuming you submit your sitemap to Google Search Console (you’ll learn how to do this later on!), you can use your sitemap to quickly ascertain how effective you are at getting your pages indexed in Google: Sitemap index statistics Can Adding an XML Sitemap Hurt Your Site? Rich media content – if you use lots of media like videos and images, “Google can take additional information from sitemaps into account for search, where appropriate.” ( source)īeyond crawlability, there are also some backdoor ways in which sitemaps work to provide you with helpful information.Prioritized crawls – Sitemaps let you ask Google to prioritize crawling certain pages on your site by adding metadata.This can also lead to your content getting indexed faster. Faster crawl times– Sitemaps can help search engine robots crawl your content faster than they would without a sitemap.In Google’s own words, “search engine web crawlers like Googlebot read this file to more intelligently crawl your site.” Here are some specific ways in which XML sitemaps improve your site’s crawlability: The main benefit of an XML sitemap is improved crawlability. But if you go to our master sitemap file, you’ll see that it actually just links to other sitemap files: A sitemap of sitemaps How An XML Sitemap Benefits Your WordPress Site The screenshot above was specifically for our WordPress posts. This is how we do things at Kinsta ( and also how Yoast SEO does things by default – more on that later). That is, you can include one master sitemap that links to more specific sitemaps (each with its own separate 50,000 URL limit). But even if your site includes more than 50,000 URLs, you can include a “sitemap of your sitemaps” to increase that number. Technically, sitemap.xml files have a limit of 50,000 URLs. But most WordPress websites will never sniff the limit. It’s not especially helpful to humans! Is There a Limit to How Many URLs You Can Include in an XML Sitemap? Compare Example of an XML sitemapĪs you can see…it really is just a list of URLs with some extra metadata. See how Kinsta stacks up against the competition. Wondering what an XML sitemap actually looks like? Here’s what our WordPress post sitemap looks like at Kinsta: What priority you’d like search engines to give to the page ( though search engines won’t necessarily follow this)īeyond those core pieces of metadata, it’s also possible to provide search engines with information on your video and image content. ![]() These options are outlined in the Sitemaps protocol and let you specify things like: That’s it!īeyond a raw list of URLs, you can also include other helpful “metadata” in your sitemap to further aid search engines in their attempts to index your site. Like robots.txt, it helps search engines like Google and others better crawl your website by giving them a “map” of all your content. Why an HTML sitemap navigation is different (and how to create one on WordPress)Īn XML sitemap is basically just a list of URLs that you want to be publicly available.How to submit your sitemap to Google and other tools.How to create an XML sitemap with a cloud-based tool.How to create an XML sitemap with a WordPress plugin.The ways in which an XML sitemap benefits your WordPress site.
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