Sitemap, it is a site map - it is the file supporting structure of your website in convenient for the search robot, and sometimes even for the living user, a view.
What is the Sitemap file?
The main destination of this file is to facilitate a task of address harvesting of pages of your website to the search robot and by that to accelerate process of indexation of your resource.
Indexation is a process of entering of contents of your website in the database of the search engine. It is necessary quickly to create search delivery - the list of links, having passed on which, the user who gathered a certain phrase in the search string will be able to find required information. In terms of SEO, indexation - the major process, if there is no website in the index of the searcher, it is offered by its user, respectively, it will not be very improbable that someone will come on such resource.
The robot of the search engine gets on pages of the website, following the links conducting with the homepage, further according to the links conducting with pages of the first level... the chain is not infinite - hardly the search robot will get on pages of the fourth, fifth and subsequent nesting levels. As a rule, the robot successfully copes with the task, however problems can arise, first, with indexation of dynamically formed pages, secondly, with definition of importance of pages.
The sitemap file allows to solve the problems sounded above - it makes available to the robot accurate structure of the website, and each element of this structure is supplied with the link to the corresponding page. The site map can exist in the form of the text file or in the XML format, depending on what specifically he pursues the aim. Yandex recommends the second format as he allows to specify additional parameters, such as: last modification date of the page, frequency of change of the page and also its relative significance.
How to create Sitemap for the website in Yandex?
The command of support of Yandex recommends to find the program for creation of a site map in the Internet, the benefit exists a set of the websites providing similar services. As a rule, on such websites the restriction for the free version affects 500 URL addresses and that to bypass it, it is necessary to you or either to pay, or to write a similar script independently. Path to the sitemap file which is located on the domain is set by the corresponding directive in the robots.txt file.
The command of support of Yandex makes a number of demands to the sitemap file:
1. This file should be on the same domain for which it is created, and, respectively, to describe structure only of that domain on which it is located.
2. When accessing the file the server should give code 200.
3. The site map should contain no more than fifty thousand addresses if them more - it is necessary to create several files. In addition, the file of a site map cannot exceed volume in 10 MB in an uncompressed view.
4. It is necessary to use UTF-8 encoding.