A sitemap is an outline of a website that provides key information about files, including the structure of URLs, crawl priority, and the date a post was published. It is a list of pages that helps search engines find, crawl, and index your content.
Sometimes, a sitemap can technically contain the HTML structure of the site. However, when most people talk about sitemaps, they are usually referring to automatically generated XML sitemaps.
Benefits of sitemap
The main benefit of a sitemap is to help Google and its search engine competitors discover all of your content. That’s all. Sitemaps are for search engines to use, not for webmasters to experiment with.
Finally, in my opinion, every website should have a sitemap. although Google’s claim For smaller sites with less than 500 pages and no need for a sitemap, there is no need to let the site’s success (both technical and traffic-wise) depend entirely on random chance.
Automatic sitemap vs manual sitemap
Generally speaking, there are two types of sitemaps: automatic sitemaps and manual sitemaps.
The fact is, There is no reason to maintain a manual sitemap. Use a plug-in like Yoast to generate one for you. Aside from a few outliers who like to operate outside of the widely adopted consensus, no serious SEO spends any time manually maintaining sitemaps.
Automating your sitemap is easy. First, make sure your sitemap is set up correctly using one of the methods below. Then, let the plugin handle all future sitemap maintenance unless something unpredictable comes up that bogs down your site. If this happens, you may have more urgent things to worry about.
How to find your sitemap
It’s helpful to know how to find a site map. It always comes in handy for a variety of reasons, including when your plugin stops working and you’re forced to perform manual changes such as fixing, updating, or removing old URLs and conflicting metadata in your sitemap.
Other reasons to visit a sitemap include:
- Submit it to Google if it’s not automatically indexed yet
- Find and replace outdated sitemaps
- Get a detailed version of your website’s HTML structure through an XML sitemap
- Identify orphan pages that are not linked internally to other pages on the site
- Double check your sitemap for technical errors
There are three main ways you can find a sitemap:
- By manually checking common URLs
- By checking robots.txt
- By checking the Google Search Console (GSC)
Here’s a more detailed breakdown of all three methods.
Manually check common URLs
The first method allows you to type the sitemap’s file name after the top-level domain of the site’s URL. There are several sitemap naming conventions you’ll want to check, including:
- https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
- https://www.example.com/sitemap1.xml
- https://www.example.com/sitemap_index.xml
If you still can’t find your sitemap after entering all of these profile names into your browser’s address bar, you either don’t have a sitemap or your sitemap was created under a different profile name.
Check robots.txt
Most modern websites have a robots.txt file. The robots.txt file contains information, rules, and instructions that tell web crawlers how to access and index the pages, directories, and media files on your website. As a good rule of thumb, it should also include a link to the sitemap to speed up the crawling and indexing process.
You can easily find the robots.txt file by typing the following URL convention into the address bar: https://www.example.com/robots.txt.
When you gain access to the robots.txt file, search for lines that contain the following sitemap file naming convention:
- Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
- Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap1.xml
- Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap_index.xml
If you can’t find a sitemap, it means your site doesn’t have a sitemap, or your sitemap isn’t declared in your robots.txt file.
Check Google Search Console
Another easy way to find a sitemap is to check your Google Search Console (GSC) account.
First, Make sure your website is connected to GSC. To check this, navigate to https://search.google.com/search-consolesign in to your primary Google Account and select settings From the GSC menu on the left.
Once you get here, make sure Ownership verification The field indicates that you are a verified owner and the resource you selected has been successfully added to your GSC account.
Next, click Sitemap From the main menu, GSC will display a list of all submitted sitemaps and their current status for the selected property.
If the following list Submitted sitemap is empty, which means your sitemap has not been submitted to your Google Search Console account.
How to set up a sitemap for WordPress
Blogs, affiliate-based online businesses, and content-focused websites primarily use WordPress (WP), so this method should cover most of your needs for setting up a working sitemap.
If you run version 5.5 or above, WordPress will automatically generate a Core XML sitemap for your website. In this case, you can find your WordPress sitemap by typing /wp-sitemap.xml After the top-level domain in the URL: https://www.example.com/wp-sitemap.xml.
However, this is just a basic XML sitemap, and again, you shouldn’t leave it to chance.
A more reliable way is to use a plugin. We prefer to use Yoast SEO plug-in Generate sitemap.
Here’s how to add a sitemap using the Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress.
First, log in to your site as an administrator. You will be taken to your WP Dashboard.
Next, go to plug-in, Add new plug-in.
type yeast In the search bar, find Yoste Search Engine Optimization plugin and click Install now.
After installation is complete, navigate to Yoste Search Engine Optimization and click settings.
scroll until you find XML sitemap card and switch Enable features Open.
Yoast will automatically generate an XML sitemap for your website. If you would like to view the site map please click View XML site map button on the same card.
Avoid using weird third string plugins – especially with everything going on in the WordPress community right now. I’ve personally had situations where sitemaps became cluttered due to unmaintained plugins. Use a proven plugin to automatically manage your sitemap.
For example, a plugin like Yoast will submit a sitemap for you. Its basic version offers a free sitemap solution that will save you countless unnecessary hours that you can allocate to more important things like writing content, A/B testingand promote your popular pages.
How to set up a sitemap for Shopify
Currently, it’s not possible to change, delete, or upload your own XML sitemap to a Shopify-powered site.
Instead, Shopify automatically generates a sitemap.xml file when you create an online store. It contains links to all products, product images, product ranges, pages and posts.
Shopify’s auto-generated sitemap is very reliable and updates instantly whenever there are new changes to your website, but it is also limited in that you cannot manually adjust or edit the sitemap when needed.
To navigate to your Shopify sitemap, enter /sitemap.xml After the end of the website’s main URL, it looks like this:
https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Shopify treats automatically generated sitemap index files as Parent Sitemap Link to other sitemaps on your site. These links are called Subsite map There are usually four representing four different category types:
- product page
- favorite page
- Number of pages
- Blog article
Here is a sample sitemap.xml file, this time from a Goodfair store:
If any initial subsitemap exceeds 10,000 entries, Shopify will automatically generate new subsitemaps to accommodate these additional URLs. Most importantly, the sitemap.xml file type cannot exceed 50,000 URLs, so this is Shopify’s way of overcoming this obstacle for large sites.
You can learn more about how to find and submit your Shopify sitemap to Google Search Console by following the steps below Shopify and GSC Guide.
How to check your sitemap for errors
If you use WordPress and use a quality plugin, sitemaps will work automatically. For Shopify users, the sitemap will also automatically update to reflect your website’s URL requirements.
However, sometimes you may encounter some problems that need to be solved. To make sure your pages are indexed correctly, go to Google Search Console And double-check the live status of your sitemap.
Here are some common issues to be aware of:
Remove redundant sitemaps
question: Have a bunch of unique sitemaps you don’t recognize? We encountered a situation where a plugin created 4 unique sitemaps when there should only be one.
Solution: If possible, remove unnecessary additional sitemaps from GSC by navigating to Sitemapselect Sitemap, click the three dots on the right, and select Delete sitemap.
Sitemap error
question: Does Google Search Console list any sitemap errors, such as being unable to obtain a sitemap?
Solution: If the answer is yes, make sure your original Sitemap profile name matches the name in GSC.
If this doesn’t solve the problem, use a tool like XML sitemap validator Verify your sitemap and try submitting to GSC again. Also, be sure to clear your site’s cache and check that the Sitemap index file is in the correct root directory by typing the name of the Sitemap index file into your browser’s address bar.
Abnormal number of pages
question: Does the number of pages detected in the sitemap roughly match the size of your site? It will never be perfect, 5-10% difference is allowed. But if 80% of your posts are missing, that could be a real problem.
solution: Check if your post is set to index. If some or all of your posts are set to No indexyou’ll notice a big difference between the number of pages in your sitemap and the number of published pages on your site. This can be done via our recommended plugins, or via Manually edit the robots.txt filewe do not recommend it for beginner users.
Ultimately, if you Do When you encounter a problem, the most common solution is to use a better plugin and save yourself some precious time.
