Navigating Search Engines: A Guide to Creating and Submitting a Sitemap

When​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ creating a website, it is important to allow the search engines to easily navigate through and discover the pages. And this is very important, not only when building a new website, but also when creating a new page or changing the structure of your site, like if you want to add a blog. A sitemap is very handy in this case. This document is the map for the search engine bots to recognize your site and help your SEO campaign. Sometimes, it can even assist your website visitors in realizing more of your content and thus improving their overall user experience.

Not every website has the absolute necessity for a sitemap, but simply having one wouldn’t be bad at all. In this article, we will guide you step by step through the process of building and sending your sitemap to the search engines. So, let’s begin!

What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap defines the structure of a website through a single file. It consists of pages and files on a particular domain and the relationship between them. Search engines like Google utilize this data to have a clear picture of the website. For example, they get to know which pages are of higher value or if there are different versions of a page, which one should be indexed and ranked.

If you wish, a sitemap can also be created for the sake of visitors who will understand better how to navigate your website and find the necessary information. Basically, web content planning is done through the website’s sitemap. Depending on the type and goal of a sitemap, it can include the following:

• URL listings of pages
• Page relationships
• The time when a certain URL was last updated
• Content change frequency (e.g., weekly or monthly)
• The language of each page
• Image/video entries
• News entries

Types of Sitemaps

There are five major types of sitemaps, which are as follows:

• Normal XML sitemaps—XML (eXtensible Markup Language)—are the most typical kind of sitemap that supports search engine indexing of your web pages.
• XML video sitemap—A tool helping the search engine bots understand the video content on your pages
• XML image sitemap—A helpful document in which all images from your site are listed for the crawl bots
• Google News sitemap—A document where the content is presented in a certain way to be recognized as news, both by the search engines and news aggregators
• HTML sitemaps—Created for users (not crawlers) to simplify navigation and/or replace the search feature

How Do Sitemaps Work?

Consider sitemaps as instruction manuals for search engines. These manuals offer the robots an orderly list of the web addresses that are at the disposal of a site and that come with extra details, such as:

• Update date – Indicates the date when the webpage was last modified
• Update frequency—The more often the update takes place, the more frequently it has to be crawled
• The page’s priority – Gives crawlers an understanding of which pages are the most important to your website

Such data serves the purpose of web robots in both finding and indexing tasks. A detailed explanation of the interaction is as follows:

• Crawling: Search engine bots use the URLs that are listed in a sitemap to crawl a website. Crawling is the actual visit of the website, and it is through crawling that the bots find pages that may not have been found before.
• Indexing: After crawling, search engines use the information in the sitemap to determine when and how to index the page. This information can include when a page was last updated or how frequently it’s likely to change.
• Professional advice: You should know that sitemaps are not allowed to have more than 50,000 URLs or exceed 50MB in size. So if your sitemap is bigger than what is allowed, it means that you should have more than one sitemap ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌file.

Why​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ Are Website Sitemaps Important?

There are many reasons that sitemaps contribute to the SEO of a website, user experience being just one of them.

Organize Large Websites

Sitemaps of a website play an essential part in the reorganization of large sites (>500 pages) that usually have a large number of pages and complex structures of the pages. They summarize the content of the site in a very clear and systematic way so that it becomes quite easy even for the search engine robots to find their way through the large number of pages and to index them in the SERPs.

Serves as a Project Management Tool

Sitemaps give an overview of your content and site structure, which means they can be used effectively as a project management tool during different phases of the website lifecycle. The developers, designers, and content creators get help from sitemaps in planning not only the structure of the website but also its hierarchy, thus making sure every page is present and smoothly integrated. Using sitemaps as a draft, the teams can communicate more efficiently and thus be at less risk of facing problems that can influence SEO negatively, e.g., broken links, missing pages.

Enhances Search Engine Crawling & Visibility

Website sitemaps lead to the improvement of search engine crawling and thus to the site’s visibility, which is very important for SEO. In their search for new content, bots of search engines mainly depend on XML sitemaps and internal links. The better the crawlability is, the faster a website’s content gets recognized and ranked in search results, which eventually increases the website’s visibility and potential to get organic traffic.

Allows for Spotting Indexing Issues

Moreover, sitemaps are very helpful tools when it comes to locating indexing problems that may occur. Webmasters, by regularly inspecting their XML sitemaps, can find faults like the ones in missing pages, duplicate content, or errors in site structure and solve them. Making these fixes without delay can keep the site from losing a position in search engine rankings and, thus, dissatisfied users.

Provides an Alternative Means for Navigation

Besides regular navigation menus on websites, HTML sitemaps represent an alternative for users to have a look through the content of the site. This is mainly for those visitors who are new to the site’s layout or are searching for specific information. By providing an extra means of navigation, HTML sitemaps for websites raise the standard of the user experience and decrease the bounce rate, which can indirectly be of help to SEO since users stay longer on the site, and consequently, they become engaged.

How to Create a Sitemap?

The very first step is to figure out whether you want to create a sitemap yourself or have the whole thing done automatically. A manually created sitemap is suitable for a small website that has fewer than 100 pages. A bigger website will be better off by automating the process in order to save time.

How to Manually Create an XML Sitemap

Creating an XML sitemap manually means you have to put your URLs together with the needed metadata of the content, for instance, the “lastmod” tag (last modified date), in a text editor. An example of a text editor is TextEdit or Windows Notepad. Make sure that the document you have formed complies with the Sitemap protocol.

How to Build an HTML Sitemap

The first step in building an HTML sitemap is to write down all the pages that your website has. After that, you should structure them in a reasonable hierarchy, starting with the most important ones, and lastly ask a developer to convert your list into an HTML page and upload it to your site.

You may also choose to automatically create a sitemap through plugins or other online tools, thus saving up your time. There are no restrictions as to the size of the websites that may use this option, and very minimal or no code is required.

The following are the steps to accomplish this:

Determine​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ Which Pages Should Appear in Your Sitemap

The primary function of an XML sitemap is to communicate to the search engines the pages that you want to be indexed and the location of those pages. In line with that, it is important that your sitemap only contains the URLs that are allowed to appear in the search results.

As an example, the logic of excluding from crawling pages that are blocked via the robots.txt file is not evident. This is because Google will not be able to access them. In addition, remove password-protected, admin, and redirect pages, among others.

As for HTML sitemaps, only the URLs that would be of interest to your site’s users should be included. Suppose you have a few pages that display past events or products that you no longer offer, then you should not list them.

Decide How Many Sitemaps You Need

The following step is to figure out whether that single XML sitemap will suffice or if you will need several. If your website is such that it may need a few sitemaps, then it might be:

• It holds more than 50,000 URLs that are intended for indexing
• It has a large number of images and/or videos
• Its material is in the form of news
• The size of the sitemap file is bigger than 50MB

If you are an owner of an online store with a product line that runs into hundreds or thousands, then the chances are high that your sitemap file will be over 50,000 URLs. On the other hand, let’s think about a professional website with a blog section that contains news articles or time-sensitive posts such as product update announcements.

It is still possible to have an additional news sitemap, although your sitemap doesn’t go over the size limit. In such a way, your blog content will be indexed in no time, and it will also be quite easy to track its performance with Google Search Console (GSC).

Use a Sitemap Generator 

Once everything is clear in your mind, take the proper instruments to make your sitemap. If you are working with WordPress, then consider the possible sitemap plugin candidates, such as RankMath, Yoast SEO, or Simple Sitemap.

Yoast SEO, for example, can swiftly make XML sitemaps and keep them up to date on its own when you add new content or change a URL. Just the installation of the plugin and enabling this feature in “Settings” is all you are required to do. On the other hand, if your website is not on the WordPress platform, you might want to look for a paid or unpaid sitemap creator. Some valuable options to think about are:

• XML-Sitemaps.com
• Dyno Mapper
• WriteMaps
• Screaming Frog
• Octopus.do

Dyno Mapper is one of the tools that allows creating visual sitemaps. Its drag-and-drop feature is very effective in adding and organizing your URLs, even if you are technically challenged or have no technical knowledge at all. ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌

How​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ to Submit Your Sitemap Using Google Search Console

Google Search Console is an important tool for webmasters and website owners. One of the features on this platform is the sitemap submission to Google, which is the primary factor in a successful site indexing by Googlebot. Here is a step-by-step manual on how to proceed to submit your sitemap via Google Search Console:

1. Log in to Google Search Console

Firstly, log in to your Google Search Console account. Creating an account is as easy as signing into your Google account and clicking on the Create an account” option. If you don’t have a Google account, you can easily create one using the same username and password that you would use with Gmail.

2.​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ Choose your property

When it comes to granting new domain permission, Google Search Console can be trusted enough once you have signed in. Adding and verifying a website as a property in Google Search Console is the next step after the signing-in process. After that, if you want to take a look at the site, simply click on the property from the list. Don’t forget that a site which has been added for verification should be shown as ‘verified’ under ‘Site Dashboard.’

3. Find the Sitemaps Section

The sitemaps segment opens right after selecting “Sitemaps” from the left-hand navigation bar. This will be the place where the user’s sitemaps and relevant data will be.

4.​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍ Provide your sitemap URL

Literally, the location of the sitemap should be typed in the “Add a new sitemap” section. To give an example, a sitemap link can be https://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml. Don’t forget to replace “yourwebsite.com” with the actual domain of your website.

5. Submit the Sitemap

It is time to press the “Submit” key when the URL of the sitemap is ready. After that, Google Search Console will indicate the completion of the process by It will be followed by the indexing request from by Google Search Console. Waiting might be the sole thing that a user with a large site can do at that moment.

6. Check on Your Sitemap Status

At this stage, users can check the status of their sitemap in Google Search Console. It shows how many pages have been submitted and how many are indexed by Google. This data helps ensure that the right pages are being crawled and indexed as intended.

7. Get Notices

Google Search Console also provides you with the recording of the errors it encounters when it tries to reach your web pages. Remove those errors for a smooth operation.

8. Refresh Your Sitemap

The change in the website content of the site owner is the primary reason for the necessity of updating the sitemap. Major changes in the content require that an updated sitemap be sent to Google Search Console.

Summing ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌Up!

Simply put, a website sitemap is a necessity that assists search engines as well as visitors in the smooth navigation of your site. Although, indeed, a submitted sitemap does not automatically work as an SEO tool, the reality is that it makes the website more visible to the crawlers.

The use of sitemaps should be a part of your larger digital marketing strategy, which will then help you to rise to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) and increase the return on your ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌investment.