Why Sitemap.xml is used in SEO?

Sitemap.xml is a coded sitemap generated and submitted in webmaster tool to help search engine spiders crawl your webpages. The process helps to index your webpages faster in search engines.
 
I have a question regarding the element used in xml sitemap. It last mod date, is it necessary to use this tag. I want to make sure as because I have been confused to use it or not and if used then is it required modify date manually?
 
First of all, An XML sitemap:
- Ensures better visibility by search engines
- Enables you to rely less on external links that will bring search engines to your site.
- Helps with broken internal links or orphaned pages that cannot be reached in other way
- Alerts search engines to any changes/additions to your site.


- Helps you choose pages that you don’t want to index

An HTML sitemap:
- Ensures improved search and navigation by human visitors
- Improves user experience thereby reducing bounce rate
- Helps you distribute links to various pages of the website.

And following are the steps for creating XML sitemap,
1. Understand XML Sitemaps ( basic understanding of how search engines use them, the protocol for Sitemaps, size limits, and the tags used in Sitemaps.)
2. Identify what types of Sitemaps you need If you want to improve traffic to videos, images, your mobile site, or news articles, use specialized Sitemaps (Sitemap extensions).
3. Pick Sitemap Generation Method ( List of sitemap generating site)
4. Figure out Sitemap content and structure
5. Build Sitemap
6. Check and validate Sitemap
7. Submit Sitemap
8. Check & Monitor Sitemap..
 
XML Sitemap is an easy way for you to submit all your URLs to the Google index and get detailed reports about the visibility of your pages on Google. This helps search engines to more intelligently crawl a website and keep their results up to date.
 
XML sitemap is a file which is created for all search engine not only google. And it helps search engine to fetch your web pages priority wise it helps search engine to know which page is the most important for your website and along with that it also helps them to understand how frequently a web page is updating its content... or last time when it is updated..
 
What is an XML Sitemap and why is having one important for SEO? Good question! Think of your website as a house and each page of your site as a room. You can think of an XML Sitemap like a blueprint for your house and each web page were a room, your XML Sitemap would be a blueprint—making it easy for Google, the proverbial home inspector of the web—to quickly and easily find all the rooms within your house. XML Sitemaps are important for SEO because they make it easier for Google to find your site’s pages—this is important because Google ranks web PAGES not just websites.

There is no downside of having an XML Sitemap and having one can improve your SEO, so we highly recommend them.

XML Sitemaps are especially important if:

1 ) You have pages on your site created dynamically (e.g. some e-commerce sites)
2 ) Your site is not well-structured or well-linked (internal links)
3 ) Your site has few external links or is new (a newly developed site just set “live”)
4 ) Your site is large and/or has lots of archived content that may not be well-linked
 
XML sitemaps serve a very niche purpose in search engine optimization: facilitating indexation. Posting an XML sitemap is kind of like rolling out the red carpet for search engines and giving them a roadmap of the preferred routes through the site. It’s the site owner’s chance to tell crawlers, “I’d really appreciate it if you’d focus on these URLs in particular.
 
You just need to submit the sitemap just once. Google will be pinged by the sitemap file itself as soon as you publish new content.
You need to have at least 10 well-written articles before asking search engines to crawl and index your blog. You can submit anytime you want but to give a better impression, submit sitemap when you have content on your blog. Submitting a sitemap with no posts would surely look weird!
 
Sitemaps make navigating your site easier and having an updated sitemap on your site is good both for your users and for search engines. Sitemaps are an important way of communication with search engines.
 
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