Site maps are very important when it comes to SEO because it tells search engines such as Google about pages on your website that it would not normally be aware of. It is exactly what the name says – a map of your website. Therefore it is important that a website submit a site map in order to promote pages that aren’t in the main directory or any pages that a search engine robot might miss when crawling the website.
Site maps are also useful when it comes to providing search engines with metadata pertaining to particular types of content that can be found on your website. This content can include video, images or news. Using site maps you can specify what the content is or licencing information regarding images.
If a website is new or does not have a lot of links that lead to it, a site map can help search engines become aware of the website. Search engines crawl to websites by following links; therefore it goes without saying that a website with few links will not attract many search engine robots.
If you have recently added new information to your website, a site map can help search engine robots discover the new information or pages faster – and this will benefit the SEO efforts tremendously. The faster search engines learn about new information on a website, the faster its page ranking will be influenced.
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