Sitemaps are basically supplementary pages added on your website that contain detailed lists and links to all the pages contained on your website, with detailed information to each page and its hierarchy. While small websites with few pages do not exactly need sitemaps, larger sites are better navigated with a sitemap.
Having a sitemap for websites is not considered a necessity since it does not affect rankings directly. Besides, if and when you update your site, the sitemap may sometimes end up being an additional thing to worry about. However, having a sitemap, according to expert SEO Cardiff services, has other inherent benefits that ultimately boost your page rankings in the long run.
Easier for Crawlers
When you invest in a sitemap, you are actually making it much easier for web crawlers to access and index your site for inclusion into search results. Additionally, you can submit the sitemap of your website to popular search providers like Google, Yahoo and Bing so that they are aware of your website in detail and can index it accordingly. In the long run, this will lead to a better indexed page, improving your page ranking.
Easier for humans
For the living-breathing visitors, a sitemap can be a lifesaver while viewing lengthy complicated websites. More often than not, a website with a very large number of pages can get really cumbersome to get a grip of for most visitors. Not a good quality as far as user friendliness is considered. Site maps can easily address your problem. This will help in sustaining traffic, and in the end, show positive signs in ranking improvement.
Changes indexed faster
Search engines will index changes to your website faster if you reflect those changes in your sitemap. This can be particularly useful in cases of websites that are updated quite often. The web crawlers do not visit the same website frequently, and hence, it is crucial that the changes be indexed before the next visit. Needless to say, an updated page is one step closer to the number one position in Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Page Results Page).
The way of the future
While standard procedure for crawling and website indexing may not be rendered obsolete in the near future, soon website submission may require a mandatory sitemap as well. It is always better to be future proof. Besides, as external links to websites are minimized due to its inherent spam producingside-effects, sitemaps may become the standard way of indexing someday. Besides, the sitemap indexing algorithms of Google are still in beta, so in the near future, it may definitely be advantageous to have a sitemap handy.
Reduce skipped pages
Since all the pages of your website are internally linked by a sitemap, there is almost no chance for a crawler to skip or miss a page during indexing. This is extremely essential in terms of proper marketing of your entire webpage. Since all pages have at least one link internally, you can be almost assured that all your pages will get the proper exposure.
Creating a sitemap is not a very tough process, and with a little bit of determination, you can easily do it. However, if the need be, our SEO Cardiff services nearby are happy to offer assistance.