Page Indexing and Sitemaps: Easy To Understand!

Page Indexing and Sitemaps

The volume of eCommerce sales has become a multi-trillion market. It is growing significantly and creating numerous opportunities for online businesses. There are hundreds of thousands of websites on the internet dealing in online sales and services. Then, how to pull the client to your website? Search engine page indexing through Sitemaps of the website is the right answer. How to index website pages effectively is a recognized professional process of search engine optimization or SEO.

The indexing of a website can be more effective if you hire professional web developers that can create a website that complies with the standards and algorithms the major search engines follow. You find more help on this page regarding the development of an easily indexable website.

Let’s try to dive a bit deeper to understand the page indexing and the role of sitemaps in the same.

What Are Page Indexing and Sitemaps?

The page indexing is the listing of the pages of the websites on the website search list of the search engine. The page indexing is done based on certain algorithms and standard rules, which are defined by both website creators and the search engine technical policymakers. Before indexing the pages, the developer of the website submits the sitemap of the website to the search engine – for instance, Google.

The search engine spider crawlers crawl the website based on the sitemap submitted by the web developers. The spider crawlers of Google apply certain standard rules on the pages and index the web pages in the web list of the Google search engine.

A sitemap is the page layout of all pages, content, and other information regarding the relationship of the pages and content of the website. The entire information is compiled in either an XML or an HTML file that is submitted to the Google search engine for indexing. This file provides information about the Meta tags, contents, and the navigational roots for spider crawlers to reach the destination pages. The crawlers travel from the landing page to the other pages of the website. All tech companies, financial companies, and government agencies take special care of the sitemaps and Google indexing nowadays. More information about sitemaps, you can find on this page.

Importance of Sitemaps and Indexing

The search engine optimization market value expected to reach $79.27 billion by 2020. It grew exponentially from just $11 billion in 2008. This substantial increase in the SEO sector is driven by the whopping increase in e-retail and online sales, which is expected to reach $4.8 trillion by 2021. To benefit from these awesome business opportunities, you need to have a perfectly indexed and optimized for the search engines. More than 55% of online shoppers search for product or service reviews before making any purchase. So, the importance of sitemaps is very high in proper indexing of the website pages and increasing the chances of a successful business.

The competition in online businesses is very fierce. A website plays a very crucial role in creating competitive advantages over the competitors if it is fully indexed in the major search engine web lists and has a better ranking from the competitors. To achieve all those business objectives, you need to develop a comprehensive sitemap of your website. You can hire professional python web programmers to create your website professionally. You can also use the outstaffing python development teams for creating attractive websites and professional sitemaps for indexing the pages of your website in the web search lists more effectively.

How to Generate Sitemaps?

Generating sitemaps of the websites is not so difficult. Any person with a workable knowledge of HTML and XML can generate a site map very easily. But, it is not a good idea to play immaturely with a business website. You need to hire a proper python developer for that purpose if you are using the Python language as the major developing technology.

The step by step procedure of generating a website sitemap is mentioned below.

Step #1 Examine Website Structure

You need to try to check that all of the important pages are on the top of your website page layout. The linking of the important pages should be clear and not deeper than 3 levels or so.

Step #2 Program All Website URLs

In a text editor, you should write codes of all URL links of the pages in HTML or XML. For this purpose, it is a great idea to use the service of a professional web developer.

Step #3 Verify Codes

Verification of the codes is very important to avoid any programming errors. You can verify codes either manually or through a suitable code validator tool. Using a good XML website validator tool is recommended for this purpose.

Step #4 Add Sitemap File to Root Folder

Now save the file that contains the codes of the URLs. Locate the root folder of the website and paste the file in the root folder. You should also add this code to the robots.txt file, which is also available in the root folder.

Step #5 Submit Sitemap File to Search Engine

We take the example of Google. On the Google Console Dashboard, click the ‘Crawl’ option and then choose the sitemaps and follow the instructions to submit the sitemap file.

How Long Does It Take to Index a Website?

The accurate answer to this question is not possible because it depends on the internal algorithms and policies of Google Corporation. In general, a webmaster can get the website index in 4 days to 4 weeks. There are many factors on the webmaster side as well as on the Google side that determine the time of indexing.

A webmaster can reduce the time of indexing of a website by adding valuable content, real language to describe the images or videos, navigation bars, and ease of use in the website structure. The sitemap file should also be available in the root folder and robot.txt.

Site Indexing Challenges and Their Solutions

The site indexing is a tricky game. You have to face many challenges to get your website indexed faster. A few of the most important challenges listed below.

  • Finding and correcting the errors in the sitemaps are the biggest challenges. You need a professional developer who can help you find out the coding or other errors on the website and remove them.
  • A badly defined Meta tag is another challenge that you need to face. You should make sure that website tags are not defined as NOINDEX or NOFOLLOW.
  • The presence of duplicate content or pages can also create a big challenge. Make sure that there is no duplication on the website
  • Regular updating of sitemaps is also a challenge, but nowadays the auto-updating features are available through tools
  • The use of redirects incorrectly can also lead to indexing challenges. Always make sure that redirects are minimal and used properly.
  • The continually changing policy and algorithms. You should follow the guidelines released by Google regularly. 

Final Takeaway

Sitemaps are very critical for the website indexing. The website indexing helps you improve the website ranking and subsequently the business prospects. You can create a sitemap easily by following the above-mentioned steps. The website indexing normally takes between 4 days and 4 weeks. The top challenges that the website indexing faces are also listed in this article. Take the precautions and cares to avoid any problem with the web page indexing.

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