A complete guide to sitemaps: Best practices for optimisation

A sitemap is an essential part of any website’s SEO strategy. It helps search engines crawl and index your content more efficiently, improving your site’s visibility and discoverability.

Whether you’re working with a small blog or a large-scale e-commerce website, understanding how to create, optimise, and submit sitemaps is vital for SEO success.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore what a sitemap is, how it works, the different types, and best practices for optimising and submitting sitemaps. By the end, you will have a thorough understanding of how sitemaps impact SEO and practical advice for implementing them effectively.

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap is a file that provides search engines with a map of your website’s structure. Essentially, it lists all the important pages on your site and informs search engines about the relationships between them.

A sitemap helps search engines find, crawl, and index your content more effectively, ensuring that all relevant pages are included in search results.

There are primarily two types of sitemaps:

• XML Sitemaps: These are designed for search engines. They contain a list of URLs on your website and important metadata (like the last modification date, change frequency, and priority), making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your pages effectively.
• HTML Sitemaps: These are designed for human visitors. An HTML sitemap lists all or most of the pages on your website, helping users navigate your site more easily.

Why is a sitemap important?

Without a sitemap, search engines may struggle to find and index pages that aren’t easily reachable from other pages on your site.

A sitemap ensures that every page, even those deep in your site’s structure, is discovered and indexed, improving the likelihood that they will appear in search results.

For example, large websites with hundreds or thousands of pages benefit greatly from sitemaps, as search engines can prioritise crawling and indexing the most important content.

How does a sitemap work?

Sitemaps help search engines better understand the structure of your website. When a crawler (like Googlebot) visits your website, it looks for the sitemap to understand which pages it should crawl and how frequently those pages should be re-crawled.

A sitemap essentially acts as a roadmap for search engines, guiding them to all the pages of your website. This is particularly useful for websites with a complex structure or new websites that may not have many external backlinks.

Key components of a sitemap:

An XML sitemap typically contains the following elements for each URL:

• URL: The full address of the page.
• Last Modified Date (lastmod): Specifies when the page was last updated, which helps search engines understand how frequently they need to revisit the page.
• Change Frequency (changefreq): Provides an estimate of how often the content of a page is likely to change (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly).
• Priority (priority): Indicates the relative importance of a page compared to others on the site (on a scale from 0.0 to 1.0). For example, the homepage may be marked with a higher priority than deeper pages.

These components allow search engines to prioritise their crawling and index the most important pages first, ensuring better visibility in search engine results.

Is a sitemap beneficial for SEO?

The short answer is yes, sitemaps are invaluable for SEO. Here’s a deeper look at how they benefit SEO:

1. Improved crawl efficiency

Sitemaps ensure that search engines can discover and crawl every page on your website. This is especially important for:

• Large websites with complex structures.
• Websites with poor internal linking (where pages are hard to reach).
• New websites or sites with limited backlinks, making it harder for search engines to find all pages.

By explicitly listing URLs in your sitemap, you improve the efficiency of search engines’ crawling processes, reducing the chances of important pages being missed or ignored.

2. Faster indexing

Search engines use the data in a sitemap to more quickly discover new content and updates. For example, when you add new content to your website or make significant updates to an existing page, your sitemap can notify search engines through the lastmod tag.

This helps search engines index new content faster, ensuring it appears in search results sooner.

3. Better page prioritisation

The priority field in your sitemap tells search engines which pages on your website are most important. This is especially useful for large websites with hundreds or thousands of pages, where not all pages are equally important for SEO.

By indicating priority, you can signal to search engines that certain pages (e.g., your homepage, product pages, or key blog posts) should be crawled and indexed more frequently.

4. Improved user experience

While XML sitemaps are primarily designed for search engines, HTML sitemaps (which are designed for human users) can improve user experience by providing a structured navigation guide. These sitemaps are typically found in the footer of a website and allow users to quickly find important pages.

Although HTML sitemaps are not directly related to SEO, they can reduce bounce rates and increase the time spent on site—factors that influence SEO rankings.

Do I need a sitemap?

Whether or not you need a sitemap depends on your website’s size and complexity. Here’s a checklist to help determine if a sitemap is necessary:

• Large websites: If your website has many pages or is difficult to navigate, a sitemap ensures that all content is indexed.
• Dynamic content: If your site frequently adds or updates content (like an e-commerce store with new products), a sitemap ensures the latest content is indexed promptly.
• Search engine visibility: If you want to ensure that all of your pages are discoverable by search engines (even those with few external backlinks), a sitemap is crucial.
• New websites: If your website is new or doesn’t have many backlinks, submitting a sitemap helps search engines discover and index it more efficiently.
• Multilingual or multiregional: If you target multiple countries or languages, you’ll need separate sitemaps for each version to guide search engines properly.

Best SEO practices for sitemaps

To maximise the effectiveness of your sitemap, follow these best practices:

1. Create an organised sitemap

Ensure that your sitemap is well-structured and adheres to the XML schema. Use tools like XML-Sitemaps.com or Screaming Frog to automatically generate a sitemap that follows SEO standards.

2. Limit the number of URLs

An XML sitemap can only contain up to 50,000 URLs. If your website has more than that, create multiple sitemaps and link them using a sitemap index file. This allows you to manage large sitemaps without exceeding the URL limit.

3. Use a sitemap index for large websites

If you have more than 50,000 URLs or your sitemap exceeds 50MB, split your sitemap into smaller files and create a sitemap index file. This will make it easier for search engines to crawl your site more efficiently.

4. Include metadata

A good XML sitemap includes metadata for each URL. This metadata tells search engines important details about the page:

• Last modified date: Helps search engines identify if a page has been updated recently.
• Change frequency: Provides a suggestion for how often a page changes (e.g., daily, weekly).
• Priority: Tells search engines how important each page is in relation to others on your site.

5. Optimise for mobile-first indexing

With Google’s mobile-first indexing now a priority, ensure your sitemap includes the mobile version of your pages. Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of your site to determine rankings.

6. Validate your sitemap

Before submitting your sitemap, use tools like Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, or XML-Sitemaps.com to check for errors. Fix any issues related to broken links, invalid URLs, or missing metadata to ensure smooth crawling and indexing.

7. Update your sitemap regularly

As your website grows, ensure your sitemap is updated whenever new pages are added, or existing pages are modified. Use the lastmod tag to indicate when content was last updated, and make sure search engines are aware of these changes.

8. Avoid including low-value pages

Only include high-quality, relevant pages in your sitemap. For example, avoid including:

• Duplicate content
• Low-value or “thin” pages
• Pages that are not important for users or SEO

9. Use canonical tags appropriately

If you have duplicate content (e.g., product descriptions), make sure the canonical tag is used to point search engines to the preferred version. This helps avoid penalties for duplicate content.

10. Submit your sitemap to search engines

After generating your sitemap, submit it to search engines via tools like Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. This ensures that the search engines are aware of your sitemap and will crawl your pages more efficiently.

How to find a sitemap

To find a sitemap on a website, you can:

• Check robots.txt: Often, the robots.txt file will have a Sitemap directive pointing to the sitemap’s URL.
• Look in the footer: Some websites link to their sitemap in the footer for easier access.
• Visit the URL directly: Most sitemaps are located at the root of the site (e.g., https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml).
• Use Google Search Console: In Google Search Console, you can also find the sitemap section to check its status and make sure it’s submitted correctly.

Alternatively, you can use a sitemap generator to identify and create the sitemap for your site.

How to create an optimised sitemap

Creating an SEO-optimised sitemap requires a few simple steps:

Step 1: Use a sitemap generator

If your site is small, a simple XML sitemap generator (like XML-Sitemaps.com) will crawl your site and generate a sitemap automatically. If you have a larger site, consider using a more advanced tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider to customise your sitemap.

Step 2: Include important pages only

Prioritise pages that are important to your business and SEO goals. Ensure that each page is valuable, has relevant content, and is worth indexing.

Step 3: Add metadata

Use tags like lastmod, changefreq, and priority to give search engines more context about the pages in your sitemap.

Step 4: Validate and fix errors

Before submitting your sitemap, check it for errors. Use Google Search Console to detect issues, such as broken links, duplicate pages, or inaccessible URLs, and fix them.

Step 5: Submit your sitemap

After validation, submit the sitemap to Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and other search engines to ensure they crawl and index your content.

Troubleshooting common sitemap errors

When creating and submitting a sitemap, common errors include:

• Broken links: URLs in the sitemap that no longer exist or return 404 errors.
• Missing metadata: If metadata like lastmod or priority is missing or incorrect, it can prevent search engines from understanding when a page was last updated or its importance.
• Too many URLs: A sitemap file should not contain more than 50,000 URLs. If your site exceeds this number, use a sitemap index file.

Sitemap and crawl budget optimisation

Search engines have a crawl budget – the number of pages they will crawl on your site in a given period. Optimising your sitemap ensures that search engines crawl the most important pages efficiently.

To optimise your crawl budget:

• Prioritise high-value pages using the priority tag.
• Avoid unnecessary pages by excluding low-value pages or duplicate content from the sitemap.
• Split large sites into multiple sitemaps to make crawling more efficient.

Sitemaps for international websites

If your site is targeting users in different countries or languages, it’s crucial to set up hreflang tags in your sitemap to ensure that search engines serve the correct content based on users’ language or location. Additionally, you may need separate sitemaps for each region or language version of your site to ensure proper indexing.

Mobile-first indexing & sitemaps

With Google’s mobile-first indexing, it’s important that your sitemap reflects your mobile pages. Ensure that your mobile version of the content is discoverable and included in the sitemap to maintain proper indexing.

Conclusion

A well-optimised sitemap is one of the most important elements of your SEO strategy. It not only helps search engines discover and index all of your pages but also enables you to prioritise key content, ensure faster indexing, and improve your overall site structure. By following the best practices outlined in this guide, you can ensure that your website remains easily crawlable, discoverable, and well-positioned to rank in search results.

Implementing these strategies will help ensure your sitemap is both efficient and optimised for SEO, ultimately improving your site’s visibility and organic traffic.

Now that you know the ins and outs of sitemaps and how they can improve your website’s SEO, it’s time to get started!