When we talk about sitemaps, we are usually referring to XML sitemaps . These consist of files that use the XML ( Extensible Markup Language ) format to list the pages (URLs) of a website. They are specifically intended for SEO optimization , that is, they serve as a “map” of the site for search engines.
“Search engines” is plural because, although they belgium mobile database are usually associated with Google, XML sitemaps can be used with other search engines , such as Bing and Yahoo. In this way, they can exponentially increase the visibility of a website.
More specifically, this type of sitemap is usually in the form of a list . Each website URL that appears in the sitemap has specific tags (such as <url>, <lastmod> or <loc>). These not only help structure the information , but also tell search engines how to use and interpret its content .
XML sitemaps are used to ensure that search engines take into account all pages on a site that are included in the listing. Even those that do not have internal links. This makes them especially beneficial for the visibility of massive websites or those with complex navigation structures .
There is one last point to consider regarding XML sitemaps. What is it? They can only contain up to 50,000 URLs , and cannot exceed 50 MB in gzip (i.e. compressed) format. What do you do when this is a limitation? The best thing to do is to create several sitemaps and organize them in an index.