What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is an organised list of the web pages, videos, pictures and other data in a website. It is a file that can help the major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex etc. to crawl and index the web pages of a particular website. This file mainly contains the URLs and other technical parameters like Lastmod, Changefreq, Priority etc., depending upon the user choice and website type.

Image courtesy : ThemExpert

Until a website is indexed on various major search engines, there is no question of getting organic traffic to your website. So, it is a basic need to get search traffic to any website.

Type of SiteMaps:

Basically, There are two types of sitemaps :

• HTML Sitemaps:

  
  An HTML sitemap is basically for the user to explore the website more easily. Usually this type of sitemap has top to down hierarchy of the website content. It facilitates user a better UX so that he/she can easily explore the content and go to the desired page easily. Google Webmaster Tool does not support HTML sitemaps format.
   

• XML Sitemap:

  
  This type of sitemap are for search engine bots or crawlers. An XML sitemap is visibly similar to  HTML sitemap but it contains more important parameters for crawlers. These additional parameters along with Link/ URLs can help web crawlers to know more about the web pages more efficiently. Google webmaster tool support XML sitemap.

Some of the Important Parameters of XML Sitemap.

Loc Element: It is a compulsory element of XML sitemap. It tells the bots about the complete link/URL of a webpage which includes whether web pages belongs to secure(https://) or non-secure domain(http://). Maximum limit of this parameter is less than 2,048 characters.

Lastmod: It is optional parameter of XML sitemap. It tells the search engine crawlers about the date on which the particular web page was last modified.

Changefreq: It is also an optional element of XML sitemap, it shows that how frequently a web page may change. It can be one of the following :

• always

• hourly

• daily

• weekly

• monthly

• yearly

• Never
   

Priority: It is not a compulsory element of XML sitemap. It tells the search engine crawler about the priority of any particular page relative to the other pages on the whole website. It can suggest the bots which web page is more important compared to other pages.

A prefect example of XML Site itself from SEOBook.com:

<urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/</loc>

<priority>1.0</priority>

<lastmod>2007-09-03T10:21:42+00:00</lastmod>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002452.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-09-03T10:21:42+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.9</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002457.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-09-03T10:43:36+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.9</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002455.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-09-03T09:36:53+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.9</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002454.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-09-03T09:09:19+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.9</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002456.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-09-03T09:47:46+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.9</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002453.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-09-03T05:28:08+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.9</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002451.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-09-01T23:00:30+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.9</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002448.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-08-31T21:18:24+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.9</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002445.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-08-31T09:34:45+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.9</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002447.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-09-03T09:45:50+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.9</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002444.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-08-30T20:31:46+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.8</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002442.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-08-28T23:25:08+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.8</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002439.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-08-31T19:04:24+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.8</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002443.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-08-28T06:14:16+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.8</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002440.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-08-27T13:25:30+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.8</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002438.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-08-30T05:36:19+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.8</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002416.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-08-27T07:32:46+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.8</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002436.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-08-30T20:39:44+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.8</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002435.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-08-25T12:04:31+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.8</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/002434.shtml</loc>

<lastmod>2007-08-27T21:20:19+00:00</lastmod>

<priority>0.8</priority>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>

</url>

<url>

<loc>

http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_aaron_matthew_wall.shtml

</loc>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_aol.shtml</loc>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_articles.shtml</loc>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

<url>

<loc>

http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_ask_jeeves.shtml

</loc>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

<url>

<loc>

http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_bad_tools_poorly_marketed.shtml

</loc>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_blogs.shtml</loc>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

<url>

<loc>

http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_book_reviews.shtml

</loc>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

<url>

<loc>http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_business.shtml</loc>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

<url>

<loc>

http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_conferences.shtml

</loc>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

<url>

<loc>

http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_contextual_advertising.shtml

</loc>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

<url>

<loc>

http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_conversion_tracking.shtml

</loc>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

<url>

<loc>

http://www.seobook.com/archives/cat_directories.shtml

</loc>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>
</urlset>

Hope this blog helped you to know the all the hidden technical details of an effective sitemap. If you have a query or suggestion about this blog, please drop a message in the comment box.