A sitemap is exactly what it sounds like: a “site map”. What is it for? The concept is easier to understand in light of the infinite amount of content, information and websites available on the internet.
Let's talk about Zettabytes, just to give phone number library you an approximate idea. A single Zettabyte is equivalent to about one trillion (that's right) gigabytes. In 2022, the best estimate put the amount of information available on the internet at 90 Zettabytes: that's 90,000,000,000,000 Gb of information – and it's always growing.
Imagine what your web experience would be like without a search engine like Google. It would be a bit complicated, right? Where do you start?
It is these search engines, driven by their algorithms, that help us bring as much order as possible to the truly chaotic amount of information available, published and available 24 hours a day.
This order is done through website indexing and this is precisely where sitemaps come in.
What is a sitemap?
A sitemap is a very simple file that communicates how the information on any website is organized, with practically all search engines – Bing, Yahoo!, Google, etc.
Part of the work of a specialist in
SEO – Search Engine Organization
– is to ensure that the algorithms of these search engines, such as Google’s algorithm, are aware of our organization.
A sitemap is essential for this purpose. With a sitemap file we inform Google's algorithm about the most important pages on your website, as well as other features considered important for SEO.
In a sitemap we can include information such as the publication date of a certain content or even the alternative languages in which it is available to the user, among others.
What is the function of a sitemap?
A sitemap fulfills two functions simultaneously:
on the one hand, it helps Google to efficiently “read” the information on a website;
on the other hand, it increases the speed with which that website is indexed and, therefore, the speed with which its contents can appear on search engine results pages – SERP.
In practice, the sitemap works like an index. It is the technical way in which we “tell” Google “this website deals with this type of subject and should be indexed accordingly”.
However, it is perfectly possible to put a website online without associating this file. Creating and including a sitemap is just one of the many technical issues that greatly benefit the optimization of your content.