Sitemaps are an oldie but a goodie in the world of SEO. They are, in fact, one of the crucial components of SEO because they assist search engines like Google and Yahoo in finding the pages of the website.

Not to mention that they help in ranking higher because Google can find new webpage and recognize notifications to old pages even faster. Simply put, we can’t survive without them. They can be intimidating and difficult to understand.

What exactly is a sitemap?

A Sitemap is a document that contains details about the webpage, video files, pictures, and other documents on your website. It is significant for several reasons, including:

• Making it easier for search engines like Google to find and understand the content.
• Best search engines through the website so that they can crawl and index the important pages.
• Assisting search in determining when new links and updates to existing pages are available.
• Assisting search engines in locating alternate localized versions of the page

Sitemap Varieties

There are subsections within these different sorts of sitemaps described above. 

1. Page Sitemap 

A page sitemap, also known as a regular sitemap, improves page and post indexation. A page sitemap can also contain the videos and images on each page for sites that are not image- or video-focused, such as photography and videography.

2. Sitemap for Videos

An XML clip sitemap is comparable to a page sitemap but focuses primarily on video content, so it is only required if clips are crucial to the business. If not, save the crawl spending plan, just a limited number of crawlable webpages and resources on the site, and add the same video URL to the page sitemap.

3. News Sitemap 

A news sitemap is required if you submit news and want your articles to appear on the biggest headlines and Google News. One important rule to follow here is to refrain from including news stories published more than two days ago in the file. The latest Google sitemaps aren’t favored in standard ranking results, so they only have news articles. They also don’t support picture links, so Google suggests using data sets to clarify the article thumbnail.

XML Sitemaps

A Sitemap is an XML file that identifies a website’s URLs. It enables web admins to incorporate more information about each URL, such as when it was last updated, how frequently it changes, and how essential it is compared to other URLs on the site. An XML sitemap is a directory that identifies all of a website’s crucial pages so that Google can identify and scan them all. It also aids search engines in understanding the structure of the website.