Sitemap.xml: How to Create and Configure a Sitemap

In Internet marketing, even the little things are important. Often, online business owners are surprised: high-quality content has already been created, an advertising campaign is actively underway, an online store or landing page is pleased with exclusive design and usability, and even SEO parameters are normal, but there is no influx of customers! Customized SEO optimization and precise audience targeting are not enough: failure happens, because conversion depends on many parameters! It is worth asking: has the owner configured Sitemaps xml (site map)? This is a small, effective solution that helps in promoting the resource and speeds up its indexing by major search engines. First of all, we are talking about Yandex and Google.

Today, promotion and optimization of any online business is mandatory, therefore, the development of a sitemap is given great importance.

Let's start from the beginning: let's define the concept of what it is, why it is used, and how it works.

What is a sitemap and why is it needed?

A sitemap is a kind of guide that helps robots quickly and accurately index a resource. Imagine: you are walking through an unfamiliar city without a guide or building a route without geographical maps and carrier contacts. Search engine robots behave similarly, forced to index a resource without a guide.

Its presence is especially important for resources with hundreds or thousands of sections. It will be useful for a resource containing about 20-30.

What happens without a guide?

• Google robots ignore new sections that have been created recently: they have to scan the entire resource again to index the innovations. Given the current amount of information that appears on the Internet every day, there is no guarantee that the robots will index your site honestly. We can say that the chances that search algorithms will scan one or two URLs and simply ignore the rest are quite high. Similarly, with updated sections, URLs with a long string of transition links, indexing priorities, and indexing frequency.
• If partial indexing fails, users may see a 404 error on the screen instead of going to the desired section: they will not get to your store, they will not be interested in the products, they will not buy them, and the profit will go to competitors.
• It affects the speed of indexing. Do not write off an important parameter for competitors: if the content is stolen properly, prompt reindexing will allow you to preserve the right of the original source. Otherwise, your personally created content, published and indexed on someone else's source ahead of time, will be recognized as plagiarism. If you have a "guide", the robots will index faster, and if you are launching a new online project, very good, competitors will not have time to steal the content, which means that you are recognized as the original source, and the positions in the TOP of the results will be higher.

This is not just a convenient guide, it is a working optimization tool.

It is created in XML format. Additionally, you can create a site tree in HTML, as major search engines strongly recommend, but, in fact, this is only important for visitors, if the structure is logical - they skip this stage.

Its benefit is obvious, the only thing left is: how to make a sitemap? The webmaster has to choose between two solutions:

• Automatic creation of a sitemap is simple and convenient. Just use an online service, and that's it!
• Creating a sitemap manually is often used for precise and dynamic sitemap settings.

Both options certainly have a right to exist, we will tell you about their features in detail.

Services for creating XML Sitemaps (sitemaps)

You can create a Sitemap (sitemap) online using several services. The most popular remains MySitemapGenerator. There are also ready-made software solutions - for example, Site Map Generator. There are online generators that are gaining popularity - Cy-Pr is a vivid example of this. In general, there are many solutions, and they are all more or less effective.

Why isn't the Sitemap generator a universal weapon in the hands of webmasters? There are two reasons for this:

• Limited number of items that can be added. That is, for a quantity of a hundred or less, this drawback will not affect the result, and you can create it using the generator without any problems, but if you plan a guide for 500+ items, the same MySiteMapGenerator will not generate it for you for free: you will have to choose a paid version. And with each update, you have to pay extra for generation.
• And here we come to the second drawback, which is much more significant: you can only generate it statically using online generators or programs. If you need to frequently change the store's assortment, upload articles to a blog, or publish news, this option will not suit you, because each time you update, you will have to create it anew and then upload it to the server, otherwise, the innovations will not be indexed by robots.

But in general, for sources with irregular or rare content changes and a small number of sections, creating an online Sitemap is quite possible.

Composition rules

Let's take a closer look at how to create a Sitemap for Google.

1. It is generated with a link to the address xyz.net/Sitemap.xml (here xyz.net is replaced with your domain). If after generation it opens with a different address, it is enough to set up a redirect to this address from the previous URL.
2. It looks like a document with a list of links and information about their update frequency, priority, and last update (directive). For data, the changefreq, and priority directives are used, respectively.

3. Your sitemap must match the data in your robots.txt file. If you have blocked any URLs (containing service information, tags) from indexing in the “robots”, you should not indicate them in the sitemap.
4. Do not include URLs with errors, test URLs, and other “garbage”.
5. There are restrictions: less than 50,000 links, the final file size is less than 10 MB.

What to do if the Sitemap has more than 50 thousand positions?

Before creating a sitemap, check if the list of URLs contains test, unindexed pages, as well as links created by using filters and categories.

You can also break it into parts: create separate child Sitemaps for different types, and categories or break them down by other parameters.

Reduce the weight to the required 10 MB and collect all options with children together you can simply: archive them! The only condition: the archive extension must be .gz.

Generating a sitemap through popular CMS?

Today, your own CMS is almost a must-have for self-respecting online business owners. It's good that almost every one of them has the ability to generate a sitemap in the CMS itself. We at Idea Digital Agency decided to consider the main three management systems and how to ensure construction with their help. Of course, we will talk about the most popular CMSs on our market: WordPress, OpenCart, and 1C Bitrix.

WordPress

To create a guide in the user-friendly WordPress environment, just a few simple steps are enough:

• You will need to install the WP Yoast SEO optimization plugin
• Don't forget to activate it. Later, it will help you with other SEO settings.
• In the plugin menu, select XML-map and configure it: enter the maximum number of URLs (up to 50,000 positions, remember!), mark pages that should not be indexed, click Enabled — done!

The WordPress plugin is convenient because it can generate a sitemap repeatedly and save all options, access to them is simple and logical. Also, if you look at the example of Sitemap xml in WordPress, it is convenient and understandable, both for webmasters and search engines. The only drawback is that it does not have built-in periodicity and priority parameters, so you will either have to give the programmers a task to "finish" the plugin, or update it manually each time.

OpenCart

To develop this tool in CMS OpenCart, we will need the Google Sitemap module. If you do not have it in the admin panel, install it, activate it, and switch it to "on" mode. In general, that's all! Below in the window, you will see the finished URL, which can be inserted into robots.txt.

There is only one feature: the URL will look clearly different from the example we gave above. But this can be fixed with a simple 301 redirect.

1C-Bitrix

• Go to the admin panel and select the “Marketing” section in the menu.
• Select the item with the self-explanatory name “Sitemap Settings”.
• If the map already exists, you will see the link and the creation date. You can edit it by clicking the corresponding button at the top of the window. If there was no original map and there was no one, click the “Create” button.
• Step by step, fill in the settings. They are divided into four tabs here. Each tab has fields where you can specify: the correct address, the pages that should be included in the map, and exclusions.
• After setting the settings, just click the "Save and run" button, and you will get the result.

Everything is simple and convenient, but there are also its own peculiarities: sometimes 1C-Bitrix works wonders and adds pages by default, even those created in the last century, removes certain types of URLs from indexing, or duplicates child ones.

How to upload a sitemap to your resource

So, everything is ready, the only thing left is how to add a map to the site. But don't forget to check first: checking the Sitemap XML takes a few minutes, but it will save you a lot of nerves. Do this with special services, for example, XML Sitemaps. Just google it, follow the link, upload the file, and run the check.

After that, add the Site map link to the robots.txt file: from there, search engines will identify it. Add the sitemap URL to the Google Search Console and Yandex.Webmaster panels.

Material on the topic: Google Search Console: how to add a site and SEO life hacks

• In Google, this is the "Crawling" submenu, the "Sitemap Files" section, enter a link to the map in them.

• Yandex has a submenu "Indexing", section "Site map files".

Both services additionally offer testing on their own, and you shouldn't skip this stage: two checks are better than one.

If you don't know how to view the sitemap, you can find the link on it:

• In the robots.txt file.
• In the CMS settings,
• In the Yandex and Google service settings.

It is easy to make a sitemap, regardless of whether you want to use automatic generator services or work on creating it manually through the CMS. Both options can be implemented by inexperienced owners, but turning to professionals will be the best solution if you want to avoid mistakes and get a tangible result.

The benefits of such a guide are quite tangible. Do not neglect this useful tool, and your resource will be correctly displayed in the PS output, and the pages will be quickly and accurately indexed in the 24/7 content update mode.

Also be sure to read our article: A selection of tools for SEO analytics