An XML Sitemaps is a file that have listed all the pages/posts of a website that help search engines like Google, Bing, etc to get the information about your website. This file is written in XML (Extensible Markup Language) language that typically includes structure and metadata such as the URL, last modified date, and frequency of updates.
What Does An XML Sitemap Look Like?
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://blog.xmlsitemaps.app/</loc>
<lastmod>2024-01-01</lastmod>
</url>
</urlset>This is an example of typical XML Sitemap structure and code. The leangth of sitemaps depend on the size of your website. If your website is huge and lot of URLs you will see a long and big XML file and accodringly.
In this blog post we will explain that why XML Sitemaps is important for SEO Search Engine Optimization and how we can generate and submit a valid XML Sitemaps for free in just few clicks.
Types of Sitemaps
- XML Sitemaps
- Video XML Sitemap
- Image XML Sitemap
- News XML Sitemaps
XML Sitemaps
XML Sitemaps typically includes all the URLs available on a website until and unless you are manually blocking any URL that you do not want to show/crawl and index by search engine. Technically those URLs are blocked by the Robots.txt file that we will explain later.
Video XML Sitemaps
Video XML Sitemaps are also play a crucial role and help Google and other major search engines to find the videos (URLs) available on your website. These videos are crawl and index by the search engine and also show in the SERP Search Engine Result Page against relevant keywords.
Video XML Sitemaps Example Code
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/videos/some_video_landing_page.html</loc>
<video:video>
<video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.example.com/thumbs/123.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
<video:title>Grilling steaks for summer</video:title>
<video:description>Alkis shows you how to get perfectly done steaks every
time</video:description>
<video:content_loc>http://www.example.com/video123.mp4</video:content_loc>
<video:player_loc autoplay="ap=1">
http://www.example.com/videoplayer.mp4?video=123</video:player_loc>
<video:duration>600</video:duration>
<video:expiration_date>2009-11-05T19:20:30+08:00</video:expiration_date>
<video:rating>4.2</video:rating>
<video:view_count>12345</video:view_count>
<video:publication_date>2007-11-05T19:20:30+08:00</video:publication_date>
<video:family_friendly>yes</video:family_friendly>
<video:restriction relationship="allow">IE GB US CA</video:restriction>
<video:gallery_loc title="Cooking Videos">http://cooking.example.com</video:gallery_loc>
<video:price currency="EUR">1.99</video:price>
<video:requires_subscription>yes</video:requires_subscription>
<video:uploader info="http://www.example.com/users/grillymcgrillerson">GrillyMcGrillerson
</video:uploader>
<video:live>no</video:live>
</video:video>
</url>
</urlset>Video XML Sitemaps code example Credit: https://moz.com/
Image XML Sitemaps
Submitting an Image XML Sitemaps to Google can help Google bots to find, crawl and index all the images available on your website. This is very helpful for those website that are heavily serving images like eCommerce websites.
Images are also a major source of getting organic traffic from search engine. Se the below image for reference.
News XML Sitemaps
News XML Sitemaps is not for all websites but only for those websites that are publishing news and need to crawl and index on vey frequently. News are not evergreen content like a how-to blog post, etc. Google have a separate algorithm for news websites and the crawling, indexing and ranking system is also totally different that normal traditional websites.
Why XML Sitemaps Is Important For SEO?
As we mentioned above that XML Sitemaps hep search engines to find all the URLs available on a website at one place.
So if you have submitted an XML Sitemaps in Google Search Console Google came to know about all the URLs you have on your website by visiting the XML Sitemap file.
Do I need To Submit XML Sitemaps If My Website Is Small?
The answer is NO.
If your website is small in size and only have few pages then submitting and XML Sitemap is not very important and Google will still crawl and index your website.
Submitting XML Sitemaps is important for those websites that have thousands of URLs. But if you are submitting a sitemap for your small website it is still ok, infect it can be helpful for you to fast indexing.
How To Generate XML Sitemaps?
There are number of SEO Plugins available for WordPress websites like Rank Math SEO, YOAST SEO, etc that make the xml sitemaps creation process very easy and same for other famous CMS Systems also. But the problem is with custom make websites that need to generate and submit the sitemap manually.
To solve this problem we built an advance and free XML Sitemaps Generator that you can use to generate unlimited and all kind of sitemaps include XML Sitemaps, Video SML Sitemap, Image XML Sitemap, XML Sitemaps for Multi-Language websites also.
All you have to do is provide the URL of your website and our XML Sitemaps Generator tool will do the rest of the job for you in just few seconds.