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How to create a Sitemap ?

If your website is large or has been created recently, you need a site map. An HTML site map provides a user-friendly experience and facilitates the navigation of the website.

Site plans can have both a direct and indirect impact on the referencing of your pages. An XML plan helps search engines understand your site’s content and reduces the time it takes to explore and index your pages. HTML plans push visitors to stay longer on your site, reducing its bounce rate.

If you are looking to improve the SEO of your site, creating a plan is an excellent starting point.

There are two main ways to do this: do it manually or use a site plan generator.

Create a site plan manually



To create a site plan, it is recommended to have an intermediate or advanced knowledge of HTML and XML markup languages.

Creating an XML site map manually requires time-consuming and tedious coding. Once this one is finished, you still have to direct the search engines to your site plan. You must use the Google Search Console for Google users and Bing Webmaster Tools for Bing.

For this reason, less experienced users are recommended to let their CMS or a plugin do it for them. Learning how to create an XML site map manually can be very time consuming and takes many hours.

It is easier to create HTML site plans manually, especially for smaller sites with little content. Simply create a new page and add links to all your content.

Many website owners do not have the technical knowledge to create a site map. In addition, as a site expands, it becomes increasingly complex to manually manage the HTML site plan.

That’s why we again recommend creating your site plans using generators.

Create a plan with a site plan generator



For web developers, XML and HTML sitemap generators make the process of creating plans easy, fast and very efficient.

Depending on the CMS you use, placing a map in a website boils down to installing a plugin.

If you use WordPress, you have access to a host of SEO plugins with built-in XML sitemap functionality. These include Yoast SEO and Jetpack.

Yoast SEO is a great option for generating XML site plans. Among these many features, this plugin allows to decide which elements of your website can be indexed by search engines.

The free version of Yoast SEO for your website may be suitable for a large number of websites. If your needs are higher, the premium version of Yoast will probably give you all the features you need.

If you only want a sitemap, Simple Sitemap is an interesting free plugin that can generate HTML plans. It is fast and easy to use, and does not require coding or configuration.

Updated on: 18/04/2023

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