We have already commented here on our blog on the importance of your company being present on the web. But how are you using the sitemap to convert leads for your business?
Before answering, let’s do a quick checklist on how are you using digital marketing?
- Do you have a responsive , easy-to-navigate website with content tailored to your persona ? If your answer was YES, congratulations! You’re on your way to winning over your customer on the web;
- The next step to achieve this goal is to answer: in what position in the ranking of Google – the largest search engine on the internet – is your website? If he’s not at the top, we have a concern to share with you in this article;
- It’s no use having content on the internet if your client can’t find it easily. To reach the level of being well located on the first pages of Google, there is another fundamental factor for your website: optimization.
- A website that meets all these requirements that we mentioned and deserves to be on the first pages of Google’s organic search therefore uses SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques. , you are already familiar with this strategy.
Now, we are going to introduce you to a fundamental element for your website to be unbeatable in the Google ranking. And that almost all people who work with digital marketing do not give due attention: the sitemap
What is Sitemap?
Have you ever heard what a sitemap is?
It is nothing more than a file available on the server that tells Google (or other search engines) what the structure of your site is, what your updates are and which pages should be indexed, that is, that they are in the Google index.
To fulfill this function, the sitemap makes it easy for Google robots to scan and take your business to the top of the platform. Doing everything well is the way for Google to look at your work with professionalism.
Through the sitemap, important information about your site, such as location, frequency of updates, date of the last change and the level of relevance of publications will be sent to Google and also to other search engines.
By containing this data, the robots are able to read the news on the site more frequently and, therefore, make it easier for the keywords to be found.
There are some criteria that further increase the urgency of having a well-configured sitemap. Pay attention if your website:
- It’s very big;
- It was recently released;
- It has isolated pages;
- It has specific content for some Google segment.
In these cases, the sitemap improves the user experience both in the navigability of the site and in the search.
Generally, SEO techniques scare people who have never messed with these protocols. However, making a good sitemap does not require much prior knowledge.
How a sitemap works
Know, first, that sitemap is a list of URLS that exist within your site.
And XML, the file format, is an acronym for Extensible Markup Language, that is, a way of presenting information on websites.
The file must be configured – ways to do this are shown below – and then submitted to Google.
If your site has any criteria that will hinder this process, such as size, don’t worry. You can split the information into two files.
And, if you still find it complicated to deal with SEO techniques, we already said that setting up a sitemap is also simple. Let’s learn?
How to configure the sitemap of your website?
To begin with, the format you will use to configure your sitemap must be well chosen. An XML file is the best way, as it is compressed, making it easier to load and, therefore, the response time in the search engine.
Now that you have this information, check out ways to manually make a quality sitemap and place your site at the top of Google pages:
Go to sitemaps.org
It is at this address that Google gathers all the necessary protocols for the sitemap. There it will be described how to start your document:
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- the opening tag must be < urlset > and the closing < /urlset >
- specify what the default protocol is with the < urlse > tag
- put < url > for each page of your site, as a parent tag, and a child entry With a more advanced knowledge of SEO, you can move forward with this step. There is also the option to configure the sitemap file in an app.
Configure the sitemap in an app
The British app Screaming Frog crawls your site and automatically creates a sitemap file in XML format. After that, place your file in the site directory by going to your site building menu.
Tell Google where the file is
The most practical way to carry out this step is by accessing Google Search Console , which is the area where the file is placed. Go to Index > Sitemaps and add the file.
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- XML-Sitemaps ;
- gsitecrawlerAnd, even if your site is made in WordPress , there is a basic plugin that helps in configuring the sitemap, as well as other SEO shortcuts: Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps .
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Concluding
Don’t think that the sitemap is the end of strategies to keep your site at the top. The most important thing is to keep SEO techniques up to date and constant.
Maintaining the optimization of your website is an ant job, both for agencies and clients.
However, in functional partnerships, it ends up becoming a pleasant activity to do, because we are talking about your biggest dream: having a successful business!
Still having doubts about which techniques are important to rank your website well on Google?
