An XML (Extensible Markup Language) sitemap is a text file that lists a website's pages to help search engines crawl and index them.
XML sitemaps allow search engines like Google to find a website and understand its structure, including its pages, sections, hierarchy, and links. They also provide information such as the frequency of updates and the relative importance of each page in comparison to others on the same website. These details help search engines determine what pages to crawl and index first.
Let’s say you have a sports apparel website with multiple pages. Creating an XML sitemap provides search engines with URLs for the site's home, products, and contact pages. Each URL in the sitemap includes additional information, such as the date a designer last modified the product page to add new items and how often they update it.
Submitting this XML to search engines improves the site’s visibility in the search engine results pages. Visit Webflow University to learn more about SEO fundamentals and how to optimize your site for search engines.
