5 Benefits of Using Sitemaps for SEO

Sitemaps and SEO often go hand in hand. It would be rare for the development and design of a brand-new website to go through the motions without a sitemap, for more reasons than one. In this article, we’ll be telling you what a sitemap is, the different types of sitemaps that are used, together with the benefits of using a sitemap. Let’s take a closer look at the advantages of a sitemap:

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap is a file containing a list of all the important pages of a website, essentially. Having them all stored in a sitemap helps crawlers to find everything they need all in one place. It can be used as an alternative to using internal links. It also helps your website visitors to effortlessly navigate your site, making it more likely that they’ll either follow through with their transaction or intent, or will at least revisit your website. A sitemap, therefore, can aid in conversion increases and customer retention and attraction. 

What are the different types of sitemap?

Generally, sitemaps do the same thing. However, one sitemap is more audience-focused, while the other one isn’t. There are also other types of sitemaps contained within the following two, splitting them down even further into: mobile sitemaps, news sitemaps, video sitemaps and image sitemaps, but the two main types of sitemap you need to be aware of are as follows:

HTML sitemap

This sitemap is designed with the human reader in mind. It’s what allows visitors to your site to navigate it effortlessly and smoothly, but search engines can also use it to discover your URLs. HTML sitemaps also contain clickable titles of your website’s posts, pages, products and services. It can also contain the content’s publication date, as well as when the content was last edited, modified or updated. 

XML sitemap

An XML sitemap contains links to your website’s posts, pages, products, attachments and taxonomies in the XML format. Its sole purpose is to assist search engines in discovering every type of content that might be available throughout your website. It will usually contain the URL of the content and a <lastmod> tag which indicates the time the content was last edited, updated or modified, no matter how big or small the change might be. 

5 benefits of using a sitemap

Now that you’re aware of what a sitemap is and the different types available to those in the field, you might now be wondering why someone would bother putting the work into a sitemap when it comes to the development of their website. There are many ways in which a business would find a sitemap advantageous, and those benefits include the following: 

1. It helps search engines discover your URLs

It can take a while for a search engine to discover a new site. However, submitting a sitemap to the search engine can help to speed up this process. Generally, the sitemap should only contain the URLs of content you want to include in the search results. This way, once the crawler finds a URL in your sitemap, it’s being told that you want that content to appear in the search results. 

2. It aids in the identification of “orphaned” content

Orphaned content refers to content that is isolated from posts, pages, attachments or taxonomies, or that is not linked to any other content. A sitemap helps search engines to discover this type of obscure content, helping orphaned content to rank just as highly as content that is high quality.

3. It informs search engines that content has been updated

Updating your content is a great technique for boosting SEO performance, whether it be website page content or an article or a blog post. If a URL has been updated since the search engine last crawled it, then search engines will determine this using the <lastmod> tag in the sitemap. It will then use this information to decide whether or not to recrawl the URL. 

4. It can improve the user experience (UX)

The UX is an imperative part of any website, regardless of the industry you might work in. No matter what, your audience needs to have a smooth and trustworthy experience with you, and a lot of that comes down to things like site speed, information on a page and so on. A sitemap allows for an improved UX because your readers can directly search your site for the content they want, rather than leaving them to the mercy of a general search bar. As a result, it will increase your dwell time and rescue your bounce rate simultaneously.

5. Building internal backlinks becomes easier 

Typically, sitemaps are a great source of internal backlinks. This is because they contain the links to all of the content you have. As such, they’ll provide internal backlinking opportunities that will fall under the radar of search engines, therefore leaving your content and your website as a whole, unpenalised. 

Kumo has over two decades of experience in the marketing industry. We have a specialist team at the helm of our operations, offering SEO, PPC, content writing and website design services that will propel your business into the spotlight. If you would like further information about how we can help you today, then get in touch with a member of our friendly, professional team today – we’re always pleased to hear from you.