Why it matters for your business
Search engines find pages by following links. A sitemap gives them a complete list in one place, including pages that might be hard to reach through links, and it can tell them when each page was last updated. It’s especially helpful for new websites, which have few links pointing to them.
A sitemap helps search engines discover pages. It doesn’t guarantee they’ll be indexed or rank well.
Example
Most website platforms create a sitemap automatically, usually at an address like yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml or yourdomain.com/sitemap-index.xml. Larger sites often split it into several sitemaps, with an index file that lists them all.
How to check or improve it
- Open
yourdomain.com/sitemap.xmlin your browser to see whether you have one. - Make sure it only lists pages you want indexed, not admin pages, duplicates or pages that redirect.
- Submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Add a line pointing to it in your robots.txt file.