E -commerce website consists of many activities: shopping carts, order confirmation page, etc. You may think that these parts and each of the pages serve your customers in some way, but some of them exist almost to serve the search engine.
The site map is such a page.
Your customer may never find that your site map is useful, but for search engines, it is one of the most useful components . It has a degree to improve your store’s search engine censorship, and the visibility of each page when searching for related keywords or phrases.
If you are curious about the necessity of the map of the e -commerce site, how to improve your store with the site map, and how you can even raise the existing site map to a new level, we have provided you to provide you with Serve. Pack the bag and set foot on the journey of the site map world with us.
What is a site map?
In short -as you may guess from the name-
Site map is a map of your website content .
Google has a useful page here. What format and their purpose -if you have encountered this term for the first time, please read it well.
Site maps usually use a long series link. Some site’s HTML maps are available for all visitors to access (find the \”site map\” link in the footer), and other sites only depend on the XML files directly submitted to the search engine.
This is an example site map from the clothing store. All texts displayed here are clicked by category or login page. The current recognized standard is at least one XML format map map (we will explain the benefits of doing so quickly). There is a visible site map page.
What is the site map for
Navigation you add to the store’s header and footer is provided to a shopker who tries to find his own way. Whether you have menu, links, search boxes, or three, these functions exist for humans.
On the other hand, the site map is not suitable for human use
. Although your shoppers can of course use them to find specific pages or destinations, , their main purpose is to help search engine index your website . The site map tells the search engine \”These are all pages available here\”. Then, the search engine can quickly add these pages to its \”index\” -basically, the huge library of each website and a single page it knows -and check the data to determine which search query is related to.
If your site map contains the product page, the search engine can easily find and compile indexes, which means that
buyers who find specific content from this search engine can also find it
. How to damage your store map of the loss or incomplete site
If the site map is useless to your shoppers, then it may not make much sense to have a site map. In addition, search engines can indeed climb the net and index on your store without XML files, so if your website is small, you may not see its purpose.
However, even if your store is small, it provides site maps for search engines instead of Suppose they will capture your website over time and make indexes for them . When you can force them to appear, why wait for them to come to you?
Uh … there must be someone who will find me soon … right?
If there is no XML site map (even no manual updated site map page), you may encounter the following questions:
New page may need to be very needed. It can be found for a long time
, especially if they do not have a large number of links with other product pages.
Your product picture may not be included in the search results , because they largely depend on the site map of the index.
The update you made on the page may not help your ranking for a long time because you did not provide a valuable metadata for search engines (including when the page When the page was the page, renew).
The less the link of your map store, the more likely it is to be excluded from the search , because Google does not know all your pages, the correlation of your store, and your store’s correlation and your store’s correlation and your store Can it completely trust you? In essence, all these seo small factorsAdd up.
In short: No site map, the search engine can still grasp your store and compile it into the index to include in the search results. But the site map makes this process very, very, very, very fast.
How to get your own function site map The good news for you is Getting the site map is not a complicated process . From generating XML files to Google, Yahoo!, Etc., you should only take a few minutes.
We will only pay attention to how to create the XML version of the site map, not HTML (style, on -site) version. If you are looking for some prompts about the HTML site map, please check this article.
Use the plug -in to create an XML file If you are using Woocommerce, then you only need to use free G OOGLE XML SITEMAPS plug -in for WordPress to start using it.
Every time you modify the site, this lightweight plug -in will generate and update your site map
(and then ensure that the search engine gets the latest information).
The sample site map generated by the plug -in. If you are already using the Yoast SEO plugin of WordPress, you can also use it to create a site map.
Do not use woocommerce? Don’t worry: you can find a explanation of the XML site map on the sitemaps.org or the creation of the XML site map through other resources.
After the site map is generated, you are gold. Hmm … almost.Submit the site map to the search engine: two ways
Before you close the work, you need to submit the map map to the main search engine. There are two relatively simple methods to do this:
Add a line to the Robots.txt file on your website
, or
Submit XML files through Google and Bing’s website administrator tools
.
Obots.txt submit
, just find (or create) this file in the top directory of the site, and then add a dealer to the bottom:
[ 123]
sitemap: http://www.woostore.com/sitemap.xml’s 13. This will tell any search engine crawler where your site map is located so that they can index it.
If you want to submit files through the website administrator tool , you need to register the Google and Bing WMT account first. After registering and verifying your store, submit your site map according to their instructions. Please note that Submitting through this method will only cover Google, Bing, and Yahoo!
Search Engine (Bing's website administrator tool also includes Yahoo!). Therefore, if you are worried about a small search engine and editing your Robots.txt file comfortably, consider replacement or use it with WMT method.
Update your site map Once your site map exists, you might may Will ask \”What should I do when I change some of the contents of the store? I need to update the map map, right?\” The good news is: if you use a plug -in XML file will automatically update any changes you make
. This includes any changes to the URL or metadata (especially the \”Last Update\” date).
If you manually create a map of XML or HTML site, Each time you change , you need to manually update the map of the site and replace the files in the site directory.
This code needs to be updated every time you change it. (Screenshot from Sitemaps.org)
As for the search engine to capture your site map again, no matter which method you first used The frequency occurs. However, if you make major changes, you can force you to immediately re -capture your website. How is this.
Site map is a small detail that affects greatly Although most of your online stores are designed for human beings, the site map is for the mapRobot design.But it will have a significant impact on the appearance of your store in search, which is why it is so important to ensure that there is such an important family!
What are the questions about the site map of your store or how to create a site map?Welcome to comment below -we are always happy to help.
If there is no XML site map (even no manual updated site map page), you may encounter the following questions:
After the site map is generated, you are gold. Hmm … almost.