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SEO and Sitemaps

An XML sitemap tells the search engine what is on your website and where that information is located. XML sitemaps are important for search engine optimization because they help search engines pull up relevant content from your site whenever a user searches for it online. When web crawlers encounter a new site, they will look through its XML sitemap to see if there is anything that should be displayed on the search results page.

XML sitemaps tell search engines like Google and Bing what you want indexed. The benefit of having an XML sitemap is that it helps web crawlers discover content on your site that they might otherwise overlook (for example, do you have any pages that aren’t linked to or accessible through your website? If so, search engines won’t be able to find it on their own). If you’re interested in internet marketing, then you’ll definitely want to make sure that your site has an XML sitemap. Of course, links carry the most weight in SEO; indeed, links (and not an XML sitemap) will have the most influence on your site’s ranking. However, by using an XML sitemap to index more of your web pages, you increase the likelihood that the most relevant content will be presented to the user when he/she enters a search query.

Search engines like Google love websites that are easy to navigate and enhance the user’s experience. Based off of this rule, your site will rank higher in the search engine results page if you have an XML sitemap than if you don’t. With SEO, every little bit helps, so what are you waiting for? If you don’t have a sitemap yet, there are several free online tools  (such as https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/) that allow you to create your own XML sitemap.