Your website’s sitemap is more important than you think. A good sitemap helps search engines find and read your website more efficiently, which can impact how your website ranks.
If you manage a WordPress website, follow the steps below to create or update your sitemap.
What is a Sitemap?
A sitemap is a type of file that provides information about the pages on your website. It usually includes each URL associated with your site. Website crawlers can review sitemaps to explore a website and understand its content.
Here is an example of an XML sitemap:
WordPress accepts both HTML & XML sitemap formats, but this guide will work specifically with XML sitemaps. Search engines use XML sitemaps to crawl websites.
Learn more about sitemaps in our complete guide to website sitemaps.
Why are Sitemaps Important?
Sitemaps help Google navigate your site. Search engines use your sitemap to navigate each page of your website to learn more about its linking structure, content, and more.
Crawl bots review and “click” on each link in your sitemap (known as “crawling.”) Google will do its best to understand what your website is about, so it can add your website to its database (“indexing”) and begin ranking your pages for search queries.
Sitemaps are particularly useful if your website’s internal linking is poor or your site has many pages.
