Do you know how important a sitemap is for your website? Even if you do, do you know how to create one that does everything it needs to? If the answer to either of these questions is ‘no’, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered.
Sitemaps act as a roadmap of your website for Google and other search engines, helping them to find and better understand your content. Sitemaps can also be used as a reference for creating intuitive navigation and an easy-to-follow structure for your site, so, while they might not seem that exciting at first, they’re pretty damn important.
The Technical Stuff
Leading search engines through your website to crawl and index essential pages is crucial for your site’s visibility – which helps to attract new visitors. If your pages aren’t indexed, they won’t even appear in the search engine results page (SERP). There’s no point spending time and money on a killer new site only for no one to see it.
Sitemaps also notify search engines when new pages and updates to old pages are available. They also help search engines find alternate language versions of your page so that you can attract international audiences.
Different Types of Sitemap
There are a few different types of sitemap, so the first decision you need to make is which of these you need for your site (but we suggest you make use of all of the below).
XML Sitemaps
XML sitemaps are designed specifically for search engines. They list all the URLs on your site and provide additional information about each page, such as the last updated date and the frequency of changes. This data helps search engines crawl your site more efficiently.
HTML Sitemaps
HTML sitemaps are created for users. They provide a structured list of links to all the pages on your website. This type of sitemap improves user navigation and helps visitors find specific information quickly.
Image and Video Sitemaps
If your website contains a lot of images or videos, it’s a good idea to create specialised sitemaps for all this lovely media. Image and video sitemaps help search engines index these files, improving their visibility in search results.
Without a video sitemap, your website videos won’t appear on Google Video search results, which is another great avenue for new visitors to find you, so don’t turn them away!
Designing Your Sitemap
All successful websites need a well-designed sitemap, for the benefits of crawl bots and visits alike, but where do you start? Unfortunately there’s no one-size-fits-all template you can use – brands have different goals, styles and audiences and your sitemap should reflect that. Thankfully, there are some basic guidelines you can follow that work for everyone.
Keep it Simple and Prioritise User Experience (UX)
While a technical sitemap is mostly for the bots, your site’s structure and navigation should be designed for the people. There’s no reason your sitemap and site navigation can’t mirror each other, so put UX at the forefront for intuitive navigation. When your visitors land on your homepage, where will they want to go? Where do you want them to go? Make the journey through your site logical and easy to follow.
An easy-to-navigate website enhances user experience and encourages visitors to stay longer. This increased engagement signals to search engines that your site is valuable. Good for you, good for Google.
Separate Primary and Secondary Pages
List out the pages you want to include in your site and consider which are the most important and will be navigated to directly from your homepage – ‘services’, ‘products’,’case studies’, ‘about us’ – that sort of thing. These will be your primary pages and will set one level below your homepage.
Your secondary pages will be all the other pages you want to include and will fall under those primary pages – such as individual pages for specific services or product category pages. Once you’ve set everything out, you’ll probably find you’ve got too many primary pages, so take a look at whether those extra pages would make sense sitting under a primary page instead.
Trim and Condense Unnecessary Pages
Once you have all of your pages mapped out, ask yourself what is really essential, which pages can be amalgamated, and which pages can be left out altogether. If you have multiple pages that all say pretty much the same thing – combine them or remove them. Likewise, if you have a number of pages that don’t need their own pages or categories, convert them into one page to keep your sitemap nice and streamlined.
This isn’t just useful for your sitemap – it helps to keep the design of your website clean and navigation much simpler.
Stick to the Three-Click Rule
When you’re on a website and trying to find a specific page, little is more frustrating than having to click through irrelevant or unnecessary pages to reach your goal. Well site crawlers don’t like that either.
The three-click rule is a good rule of thumb that ensures users can reach any page on your website within three clicks. This rule helps maintain a shallow site structure, making it easier for search engines to index your pages.
Update Regularly
If you make regular changes or updates to your site (and you should), then your sitemap is never really ‘done’. Regularly update your sitemap to reflect any changes to your website. This includes adding new pages, updating existing ones, and removing obsolete content. An up-to-date sitemap gives search engines the most current information about your site.
Submit Your Sitemap to Search Engines
Don’t put in all this work only to fall at the final hurdle. Once your sitemap is finished, it needs to be submitted to search engines so that they can use it. Use tools like Google Search Console to submit your sitemap and monitor its performance.
Designing an effective sitemap is essential for getting your website seen, so it’s well worth putting in the time to get it right – follow these tips and you’ll be off to a great start. Or, why not partner with us here at Illicit to create a showstopping new website where SEO considerations like sitemaps are built in from the start.
You can learn more about our sustainable website design services here, or feel free to get in touch.