Best Practices to Optimize Your Sitemap for Search Engines
5 minutes | Word Count: 804There is so much that goes into the creation of a website that can draw people and that is the reason why you will need to know how to create the sitemap for the Search Engines. They will be able to find you easily and you will likely come out on top when you do what is detailed here.
We will find out what is important about this and how you can get your site to be the one that is featured heavily here.
There is something about SEO that requires you to be skilled and very meticulous with what you do so that you do not skip anything in the process. That is because you will need everything that you have to be at the top.
What is a Sitemap?
Sitemaps are the ones that will provide Search Engines with what is essentially a blueprint of the layout of the website. That is how you will be able to go to the top of the Search Engine results. There is so much that included in the sitemaps that is used to show where you appear.
This will include things like Metadata- This is all about how often the page is updated, the changes that you made and when, the interrelated pages within the site and the information about what pictures portray.
With the Sitemaps, you will be able to display websites that lack some of the things that make them appear at the top easily. This includes things like:
- Archived content that is not linked together.
- When the webpage does not have external links.
- When you have hundreds or even thousands of pages.
As you will find out. It is very crucial that you have a complete sitemap.
Here is How You Do It?
Automatic Generation of the Sitemap
This is done using tools and plugins that are created for this specific purpose. That is how you will be able to get what you need. With the in-built XML sitemap generators, you will find this to be a much easier task than you may have anticipated.
For example, when you have sites like WordPress, you can use the Yoast SEO to enable XML sitemaps to be found directly in the plugin.
Submit the Sitemap to Google
This way, you will be indexed and that is how you will be easier to find when someone searches something that is in direct involvement with what you have in the content. This easy process will not need you to do much except add the sitemap Crawl.
This is found on the Google Search console dashboard. There is so little that is required of you. All you need to click is ‘add sitemap’.
Give the High Quality Pages Priority
This is akin to the saying that goes ‘put your best foot forward’. That is something that you will be doing when you use the high quality pages to be the ones that are easily found. This will be because with their high quality, they are likely to attract more people.
These will be pages that have things like video, images, unique contents and highly optimized with the right keywords and such.
Sequester and Solve the Indexation Problems
This is something that you will need to take care if in a way that is prompt and very efficient. The best way to do this is to make sure that you have tested all the pages and see which ones have the problem. Sometimes Google will not index them all.
That is how you will be able to find which ones were left out and why. That happens usually with pages that may not have unique images, or unique content and such things.
Include the Canonical Versions of the URL
This means that you will need to use the URLs that are from the main page and they will be the one that will be indexed. This will make it easier to discover the key pages that are most important. In addition, you will need to make sure that you avoid this one thing.
Do not use the canonical URLs to point to the other pages. This is because the indexing bots will have a harder time discovering the key pages.
Eliminate All No-Index URLs in the Sitemap
When you have pages that say do not index or not allowed to index, you will find that this lack of consistency in what you want will confuse Google bots. That is the reason why you will need to make sure that you have eliminated all the no-index URLs in the sitemap.
This makes it easier for everything to be indexed and to be found smoothly.
As you will find out, this information will go a long way or you can consider SEO services to help you and get good rankings.