When it comes to website design, there are many phrases that you might come across that you don’t know too much about. With a great digital agency on hand, you won’t need to worry about many of these elements. In this blog, we’re answering the question, what is a sitemap?
The web design process
At Complete, we’re passionate about helping our clients reach their goals and improving their online presence. We don’t create a website and leave you to it, instead, we continue to identify ways that we can help you grow your business.
In the first instance, we’ll meet with you to discuss your goals and requirements. This gives us an idea of what functionality your site will require and gives us the opportunity to share any of our own ideas.
Once we have established what you want to achieve, our team will get started on the website design. We’ll present you with a design plan and give you the opportunity to provide feedback. Once you’re happy with the design, we’ll start the development process.
We’ll work with you to ensure that your project is delivered on time and within budget. When the website is complete, we will conduct rigorous testing to ensure that it meets all expectations.
After testing, you can announce your new website to the world!
All of our websites are built with a positive user experience as a priority. We ensure that our sites work efficiently and look great. We have fantastic attention to detail and are always on hand to support you with all aspects of your website and digital marketing.
What is a sitemap?
A sitemap is essentially a blueprint of your website. It shows how many pages your website has and is used by search engines. Your sitemap can be used to teach search engines how important specific pages are on your website. This helps search engines to determine the ranking positions of your web pages.
What are the different types of website sitemap?
There are different types of sitemaps depending on the reason for their use. It’s not uncommon to have multiple sitemaps to show all your pages in different formats.
XML Sitemap
An (Extensible Markup Language) XML sitemap file is specifically designed for search engines to help them crawl websites and identify the most important pages on your website.
An XML sitemap will usually list all of the URLs that you would like to be indexed on your website. Being indexed means that they can be picked up by the search engine crawlers. XML sitemaps can help you achieve this. They may also be referred to as an XML file.
HTML Sitemap
HTML sitemaps are designed to help users navigate a website. These sitemaps generally include a list of links to other website pages. These pages can be accessed easily from the sitemap and will usually be shown in order of importance. For example, you would have a main page, with other pages linking off it that are relevant but maybe less important.
You can also have an image sitemap and video sitemap for your site’s pages. You may also have news sitemaps.
Our team will create a sitemap for you, mitigating the need for you to use a sitemap generator. We can create both XML sitemaps and HTML sitemaps for all pages on your site. We also use tools such as Google Search Console to ensure that your website is performing well in search results.
What’s the difference between a sitemap and my website’s navigation?
Your website navigation is a crucial aspect. It is another name for the menu, so it needs to be clear. With poor navigation, users might leave your website quickly because they cannot find the information they require.
Even though a sitemap can be used as a way around your website, you shouldn’t rely on site visitors using this. It should always be in the footer of your website, where the navigation is the first port of call for website users.
Do I need a sitemap?
Sitemaps aren’t actually essential, but they are very helpful. With a sitemap, search engines can crawl your website more easily. Sitemaps are particularly useful for smaller, new websites with fewer links and very large websites. There is nothing to lose by uploading a sitemap to popular search engines.
Submitting a sitemap also allows search engines to scan the content on your website and, in turn, the internal and external links throughout your content as well.
Internal and external links within your website help to show the search engines that your content is relevant and valuable. If you have a great internal linking strategy, it shows the search engines that your content flows.
Another type of link is a backlink. These are links from external websites that are linked to yours. These external links are most beneficial when they come from reputable websites rather than smaller websites. You should avoid spam websites at all costs. Backlinks help to improve your domain authority (DA), which also impacts your ranking position on the search engine results page.
To best utilise these backlinks to your content, it’s important to ensure you have a great site structure and sitemap in place so that any domain authority passed from the referring website is used effectively.
What do I do with a sitemap after it’s been created?
After your sitemap has been created, you will need to submit the sitemap to Google and other search engines. Once your sitemap has been added and the search engines have had time to crawl it, you will notice improvements and suggestions. This can help you to identify any broken links and rectify them.
Having broken links on your website can damage your user experience which can also impact your search engine optimisation and ranking position. It’s best to fix broken links as soon as possible for the best results. You may notice other sitemap errors, such as orphan pages or duplicate pages. These may also be outlined on Google Search Console.
We hope this blog has been useful and answered the question, what is a sitemap? Our web development team is on hand to discuss any website requirements and can help you turn your website ideas into reality.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us for any advice regarding your website or digital marketing – we’re more than happy to help.