Drachsi uses professional grade software to create sitemaps for all business customers, taking care of a problem which can seriously effect the search results of any company website. This can be done on a regular basis to suit a budget.

More than 50% of company websites don’t have a sitemap, and many others do not maintain them.  This is a major reason why many companies never achieve high positions in search results, most of the information on the website is never indexed correctly, and is often out of date. Both Google and Bing use the xml type sitemap.

It is really important that  website sitemaps are produced which show detailed dates and update times in the map. This means every time a page is changed, added or deleted (Don’t delete, reuse) the relevant sitemaps also need updating. Small details like this can make a significant difference to increased visitor numbers.

What is a sitemap and why are they important?

A website sitemap can be considered as an index of all the information on your website. Pages, images, videos, PDF files, and special versions for news, mobile, RSS, etc. search engines use different sitemaps to recognise new pages and more importantly, when they were updated. See the Wikipedia article on Sitemaps

Types you need are in the format .html, .html, .rss, .xml, .txt, .net and are always placed in the main directory of your website. Different search engines use different types of sitemaps, i.e. Google uses an .xml sitemap. Yahoo uses a .txt sitemap etc. plus the robot.txt file.

Unique xml sitemap  example

The most important sitemap of all.

<url>
<loc>https://www.drachsi.com/webmaster/</loc>
<lastmod>2021-03-21T17:53:28+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://www.drachsi.com/blogs/</loc>
<lastmod>2021-03-21T014:17:01+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.7</priority>
</url>

This needs to list every webpage that requires indexing.

You will notice the location and page name is listed. The last date and time of the update. Frequency of change, this can be daily, weekly, monthly etc. the time that the search bot should return to check for new updates. Priority is special value for the significance of the page. Newer pages indexed by Google will be listed higher in the results page. This layout and information is very suitable for Google.

A Google style sitemap is essential for every website

A Google sitemap is in the xml format and serves two main functions. The first is to provide an index of your website content for Google to research and index. Important if you want all your pages, images, video’s, pdf’s etc., to be listed.

The second function of the sitemap is to notify Google when you have made additions, changes and the date and time the changes were made. In the old days you had to do every thing manually, now having an xml sitemap, the process is automatically done for you. There a number of different style sites, each has its special function of providing an index to all search engines.

If you host videos on your website, this is the type of sitemap you need. Notice the detailed amount of information available to the search engines for index.

There is a lot of worked required to maintain all the different types. You might like to read the following instructions from Google for a News sitemap.    You still have to add your url to Google, Bing, Yahoo, Alexa and DMOZ, or just wait and hope they find your website.

Ready for your personal website sitemap?

£20 plus Country VAT if applicable.

We know our sitemaps

Close Article