What is a sitemap? What is the correlation with SEO? Explanation of tools and Mechanisms

SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on improving a website's rank in search results on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. One of the most important things to consider when building a website with SEO in mind is the sitemap.

A solid site design helps search engines find your website and is a navigational tool that helps users find information quickly.

This time, we will introduce the features of site map, which plays an important role in SEO, its mechanism and its relation with SEO.

What is a Sitemap

A sitemap is a "map of your entire site" designed to help both users and search engines support your website. It is essential to list website content and design it so that search engines like Google and site visitors can easily understand the content.

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing use bots called crawlers to find various pages on a site from sitemaps. Without sitemaps, search engines would focus on low-priority pages and risk missing high-priority pages.

Plus, creating a sitemap makes it easier to understand the structure of the entire site. Even when working with multiple people, there are benefits such as facilitating a common understanding for all.

The Importance of Sitemaps

One of the main importance of having a sitemap is to support your SEO strategy. Search engines use crawlers called bots or spiders to examine and index websites to learn more about the content on the pages. You can support rapid indexing by giving this crawler information about your sitemap. Doing so makes it easier for crawlers to display when users search for keywords. Sitemaps are especially important for websites using Adobe Flash or Java Script that do not contain HTML links.

Google creates Google sitemaps to make it easier for crawlers to find dynamic pages, such as videos, that are easy to miss. Bing and other search engines also support this protocol, indicating its importance.

Sitemaps are not only important for search engines, they are also useful for users looking for specific pages on your website. In particular, internal links are powerful for SEO, and by making it easier for website visitors to click on the pages of your site, you can expect the effect of increasing their stay time.
As such, sitemaps are useful to both search engines and users.

What is SEO

I will briefly explain the SEO above.
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization, and it makes it easier to find web pages of organic search results, which are pure search results without ads, by comparison with other sites.

Search engines such as Google use crawlers to collect information about content posted on the Internet. The crawler starts with a web page of awareness and follows internal links to pages on that site and external links to pages from other sites.
When a user enters a keyword into a search window, the search engine uses complex algorithms to display the information that best matches that keyword. By streamlining this series of processes and improving website relevance and usability, we improve the ranking of search results for search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

By optimizing the information on your website so that it is easy for search engines like Google to understand, and by taking measures to ensure that it is ranked highly, you can increase the number of reaches and attract customers without advertising.

Sitemap type

There are two types of file formats for sitemaps: an HTML file created for users and an XML file created for search engines. An HTML sitemap is a sitemap that your site visitors can view and help navigate to specific pages.

An XML sitemap is a search engine-only sitemap that can only be understood by search engines.
Although both have different characteristics, both are recommended, and now the two types of sitemap creation method is also recommended.

HTML file

An HTML sitemap is a file that helps users navigate. By directing your site visitors to your sitemap, you can help them find missing or buried topics. Site builders can build better sites by organizing their sites and making information visible, showing search engines that they are user-first.

xml file

An XML sitemap helps search engines find your pages on the web. Google, Yahoo! Like an XML sitemap of pages readable by search engines! and bing. You can list your site's URL and post information about each page of your site so that search engine crawlers can better navigate and index your site.

Creation Procedure Using the Site Mat Recommendation Tool

HTML sitemap

HTML sitemaps can be created using manual input and plugins.

Here, I will introduce a simple creation procedure using the WordPress plugin Ps Auto Sitemap.

Html Sitemap Creation Procedur

Add a new Ps Auto Sitemap from the WordPress plugin and activate it.
Creating a fixed page
Ps Auto Sitemap is required for setting the fixed page after this. Once the installation is complete, the first step is to create a static page.
Click New from Fixed Page.
Enter sitemap in the title and sitemap in the URL slug.
When entering text, click Custom HTML from the + mark. At that time, switch to text editing mode and enter.
Enter <!– SITEMAP CONTENT REPLACE POINT –> in the custom HTML block.
Click Publish after input to complete.
From the setting screen, click Ps Auto Sitemap and make various settings. There are two main changes that need to be made.
Uncheck the output button on the home page.
Enter the ID of the fixed page you created earlier in the article column for which you want to output the sitemap.
Click Save Changes to complete the settings.

XML sitemap

As with HTML sitemaps, XML sitemaps can be created manually, using plugins or automatic creation tools. However, it is difficult to create manually without knowledge such as engineers. Here, I will introduce a simple creation procedure using the WordPress plugin XML Sitemaps.

XML Sitemap Creation Procedure

Add a new XML sitemap from WordPress plugin, install it now and activate it.

From the Settings screen, click on XML Sitemap and make various settings.
Update basic settings notifications: Check all three.Advanced Settings: Default

additional pages if
You have additional pages, add them here.

priority of posts
You can decide how often the crawler will visit. Basically, if you check "Don't automatically calculate priority", there's no problem.

sitemap content
xml Select the content to include in the sitemap. In the case of a normal blog, there is no problem with three locations: "Home Page", "Include Posts (Individual Articles)", and "Include Fixed Pages".

excluded items
Set items to be excluded in the XML sitemap.

Change frequency
This is the setting for the update frequency.

Priority setting
Basically, there is no problem with the default setting.

Google Displays Valid URLs: In the sitemap, beware of spelling errors and list only valid URLs. If you make a mistake, there is a risk that it will not show up well in search results, so be careful.

Add to Google Search Console

Even if you create a sitemap, it is meaningless if it is not recognized by Google and the crawler does not patrol it. By registering with Google Search Console, Google will recognize your website and crawlers will visit it.

Registration procedure
Register with Google Search Console
Click on
site map Add new site map
Submit, complete

Mobile and desktop versions

In recent years, with the spread of smartphones, etc., search has become familiar, but if you want to list both the desktop version and the mobile version in the xml sitemap, you need to be careful. Not required if the desktop and mobile versions have the same URL, but if different, one of the URLs must be linked.

If you want to link both, paste the rel="alternate" tag pointing to the computer page called annotation in the URL to the mobile URL as shown below.

<?xml version="1.0″ encoding="UTF-8″?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9
xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3 .org/1999/xhtml">
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/page-1/</loc>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max- width: 640px)"
href="http://m.example.com/page-1″ />
</url>
</urlset>

Your sitemap should contain only legitimate URLs and be careful of spelling errors. If you make a mistake, there is a risk that it will not be reflected well in the search results, so be careful.

Summary

A sitemap is important for a website. If your site is not listed high in search engines, you will not be able to find or view your site. Therefore, SEO can be said to be essential. Sitemaps for search engines such as Google do not seem to have a direct effect on SEO, but you can expect an indirect SEO effect by having them understand the content. Do SEO well and create content that can be found in search.