If you have a small website with content which is posted on a regular basis, it will be easy to generate an XML and HTML sitemap by hand and upload it to your webspace whenever new content is produced.
If you have a website with a lot of pages and a nearly daily update frequency, such as a blog, having the ability to produce a new sitemap whenever new content is ready is really useful.
Google provides SEO specialists with XML sitemaps as a service. They aren’t essential, and have no effect on how well a site ranks. As a result, if you alter or add pages to your site, Google will eventually find them.
HTML Sitemaps
Because Google’s crawler looks for an HTML sitemap when it comes to your site, an HTML sitemap will slightly speed up the procedure. The user experience is much enhanced when an internet store owner creates an HTML sitemap since it provides clear navigation to explore the online store. Customers can now find desired information by simply clicking links specified on the HTML sitemap, rather than searching for pages.
XML Sitemaps
Google Search Console tells the crawler exactly where to go for the most important pages on the website and even ranks them in that priority order. An XML sitemap will speed up the process a little.
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How Often Should You Update?
You may not need to update your sitemap for months if you have a static site that doesn’t change frequently. If your site has items, promotions, or blog articles that are continuously changing and being added, you should update your sitemap more frequently. If you don’t make regular modifications to your website, you can do it manually and resubmit to webmaster consoles.
5 Steps to Updating your sitemap.xml file
- Create your XML Sitemap file first.
You may generate a sitemap file for your website by visiting one of several websites. I looked up “sitemap generator” on Google and came across XML-Sitemap.com, which worked perfectly. Simply enter your website’s URL and receive the created files for free. Sitemap.xml is the file we require.
- Upload your sitemap.xml file on the root server of your website.
You’ll need one of the following two things to upload your sitemap.xml file to your website’s hosting server.
- A) The login and password for your website’s hosting control panel, so you can use a file manager tool provided by your web host to upload the sitemap.xml file to your website’s root (/) folder.
- B) You can install a free FTP (file transfer protocol) tool, such as FileZilla, on your computer to upload files directly to your website’s hosting server. You’ll still need to register an FTP user account with a username and password, as well as a hostname, on your hosting account.
- Verify that sitemap.xml is located in the root folder of your server.
The sitemap.xml file should be placed in your website’s root folder. This is normally the ‘/’ folder, and it’s also the same place where the ‘index.php’ and ‘.htaccess’ files can be found.
- Make sure your sitemap.xml file is up to date.
Now go to your website and add the /sitemap.xml suffix to the domain name, for example, www.demodomain.com/sitemap.xml. If the page you see looks like this, it was successful!
- Submit your new sitemap to Google and Bing search engines.
Both Google and Bing offer powerful Webmaster Tools services that allow you to set up an account and manage all of the websites you manage. Following their verification instructions, which normally include adding a snippet of code to the header or footer of your homepage, you’ll need to prove that you own your website.
Once validated, go to the Webmaster Tools “sitemap” section to upload or resubmit your sitemap.xml file. Both search engines give sophisticated tutorials and support information to assist you in completing this task, as well as advanced reporting tools to tell you more about your website, such as any broken links or how many pages are currently indexed vs. what was submitted.
About the Author
My name’s Semil Shah, and I pride myself on being the last digital marketer that you’ll ever need. Having worked internationally across agile and disruptive teams from San Fransico to London, I can help you take what you are doing in digital to a whole next level.