How to Create a Sitemap: A Beginner’s Guide

Do you feel dejected after waiting too long for Google to index and rank your helpful content? The search engine probably hasn’t discovered your content yet.

However original and helpful your content is, it should first be discovered by Google to unlock its SEO potential. The good news is you can always grab Google’s attention to your website if you know how to do it.

Remember, high-quality content is Google’s beloved. Once Google finds its way to your website and discovers your pages featuring high-quality, user-focused content, Google will fondly embrace them into its index and rank them higher.

But again, for that to happen, you should guide the Google bot to just the right spot where it can find all the important pages on your site. That’s your sitemap.

In this write-up, I’ll tell you how you can create a well-structured sitemap to prompt Google to crawl, index and rank your website faster.

What Is a Sitemap?

As the name itself suggests, a sitemap is a map of your website. 

Think of it this way. Just like a road map that helps people find different destinations easily, a sitemap helps search engines like Google discover and understand the important pages on your website.

Without a sitemap, Google may find it difficult to discover some of your critical web pages. As a result, it may take longer for the search engine to crawl and index them. Even worse, those pages may go unnoticed forever.

When search engine crawlers can’t find your pages, you miss out on your brand’s online visibility for relevant searches.

An SEO-optimized sitemap in place can help improve your visibility and add value to your digital marketing efforts.

Benefits of Creating a Sitemap

Creating a sitemap can bring multi-faceted benefits to your website. Check them out below.

Enhanced SEO

As I mentioned earlier, a sitemap can complement your website’s SEO by guiding search engine bots to your important pages.

This way, it makes way for the search engine to comprehend your website structure better and improves your chances of ranking higher in search results. 

This is especially helpful for larger sites with a complex hierarchy where some crucial pages might otherwise fail to achieve their full ranking potential.

Improved Crawling and Indexing

A sitemap ensures that all your important URLs are listed in one place so that they are easily discoverable. 

This allows search engine bots to crawl (or re-crawl) and index your new and refreshed web pages faster.

Using a sitemap, you can make sure that you keep Google posted about all your site’s essential changes. 

This can be particularly helpful if you frequently update your existing content or add new pages to your website.

Higher Visibility in Rich Results

There are different types of sitemaps, including, plain text sitemap, image sitemap, video sitemap and more.

These asset-specific sitemaps can help search engine bots discover and index rich media content more effectively.

This can increase the probability of your content appearing in rich results like video carousels, image packs, rich snippets and more.

For example, an image sitemap can improve the visibility of your images, while a video sitemap can help showcase your video content prominently.

The appearance of your content in rich results can help boost your click-through rates and overall user engagement.

How to Create a Sitemap

Let’s get to the execution part of sitemaps. Here’s how you can create your website’s sitemap.

Step 1: Review Your Site Structure

To create an effective sitemap, you should have a clear understanding of your website’s structure.

Making sense of your site’s hierarchy will help you organize your web pages efficiently and transition them into a well-structured sitemap later.

Step 2: Shortlist Your Categories and Subcategories

After closely studying your site’s architecture, it’s time to segment your web pages based on primary categories and subcategories.

Go on to identify and shortlist important pages in alignment with these categories and subcategories.

For example, you can list critical pages, such as Products and Services, Pricing, Blog, and About Us, as primary categories and then include corresponding subcategories under each section. 

Create a simple chart reflecting these classifications and save it for future reference to avoid confusion.

Note: Keep it as simple as possible. A well-structured sitemap doesn’t include every single page on a site.

Step 3: Code Your URLs

Hang on. Here’s where things get a bit technical. 

Once the URL sorting is done, you need to code the shortlisted URLs into an XML sitemap. It can be done manually or by using automation tools.

The manual method can be daunting and time-consuming.

If you’re into coding or require more customization options for your sitemap, you can choose to create an XML sitemap manually.

Here’s how you do it.

• Narrow down the pages you want to include in your sitemap.
• Create a new XML file in your text editor and include the necessary XML tags.
• Specify the URLs of each page and add optional tags for more information.
• Save the XML file.

Is coding all Greek and Latin to you? No worries. You can use a third-party sitemap generator tool like xml-sitemaps.com or Screaming Frog to generate your sitemap.

Download the sitemap generated by the tool. It looks something like this.

Alternatively, you can leverage WordPress plugins like Google XML sitemaps or Yoast SEO  to create your sitemap directly from your WordPress backend.

Step 4: Validate the Code

Hold on. Even the smallest error in your XML file can prompt the search engine to ignore your sitemap completely.

That’s why you need to validate the XML file carefully before adding the sitemap to your website.

Use an XML Sitemap Validator tool online to evaluate your sitemap and check for issues before going ahead.

Step 5: Add Sitemap to Your Website

Go on to upload your sitemap to your website’s root directory. It’s usually named sitemap.xml and you can access it at a URL like https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.

Source: Stackoverflow

Step 6: Submit Your Sitemap to Google

Finally, submit the URL to Google for faster indexing and ranking of your web pages. 

Navigate to Sitemaps under the Index section in the Google Search Console. Enter your sitemap URL and click Submit.

Creating an organized, error-free sitemap is the trump to get Google to crawl and index your key pages faster.

It helps boost your website’s visibility in search results, accelerates user engagement and catalyzes overall SEO growth for your business.

Go ahead and create your sitemap in a few simple steps to give your brand the online visibility it rightfully deserves in the online space.