What is a sitemap and why is it important?

Sitemaps are a protocol that allows the webmaster for a website to inform Google and other major search engines about URLS on a website that are available for crawling. Sitemaps allow search engines to find all of your webpages, that they might otherwise miss when indexing.

Types of Sitemaps

There are two popular versions of a site map:-

1.     XML Sitemap

2.     HTML Sitemap

An XML Sitemap is a structured format that a user doesn't need to see, but it tells the search engine about the pages in a site, their relative importance to each other, and how often they are updated.

Having this information within one document helps search engines understand your website and crawl it more intelligently. Sitemaps are an inclusion protocol, where Robots.txt files are exclusionary.

HTML sitemaps are designed for the user to help them find content on the page, and don't need to include each and every subpage. 

UnderstandingSearch Engines and Sitemaps

You do not upload your sitemap to the search engines. After you have uploaded the sitemap to the server, you simply have to submit the full URL to your sitemap. After you have submitted the sitemaps to the major search engines, the next time they crawl the website they will have a better understanding of how your website works.

Google: You will need to use your Webmaster Tools account to let Google know the full URL to your sitemap.

Bing: Bing uses Windows Live accounts under the Webmaster Center section to specify sitemaps.

Yahoo: You will need to sign in to Yahoo! and insert the url in the 'Submit Site feed field.