A sitemap is a structured outline or list detailing the main pages on a website. Sitemaps are utilized by crawling bots to ensure that they efficiently find and index all of the important content on the domain. A sitemap also serves as a helpful, high-level overview of a website’s overall structure.
To successfully benefit from a sitemap, a website owner must follow a few important steps. First, they need to select a format for the sitemap, which can be XML, RSS, or simple text.
Next, the sitemap must be created. This can be done manually or automatically (by employing a sitemap generator), depending on the size of the site and the number of pages intended for inclusion.
Finally, the sitemap needs to be submitted to Google via Google Search Console. Notifying Google that a sitemap has been added or updated helps ensure that the crawling robots will follow this new set of instructions and index the site accordingly.