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Do I Need A Site Map?

Have you recently created a website and has set it live? Did you know that you need to create a sitemap and put it on Google Search Console to make it visible for searchers?

Having no sitemap/the wrong sitemap can have a great impact on your newly created website. A sitemap is needed for search engines to find you website and fully crawl your new pages, posts and images and have you a go at actually popping up as a result on Google searches.

Overview:

Submitting a sitemap to search engines like Google is like giving them a map of your website. This map shows all the pages and what’s on them. It helps search engines find and list all your pages in their results. So, when someone searches for something related to your site, it’s more likely to show up.

Think of it as putting your website on the search engine’s radar, which can help bring more visitors to your site.

Problem

Solution

Results

The Problem

The website first went live July of 2023, but when I checked on November of that year here’s the current state of their sitemap on Google Search Console:

having the wrong sitemap in Google Search Console

It had the wrong sitemap since it went live (July 2023), which is one the most important steps post- publishing that is commonly missed by small businesses when a new website goes live.

Now the thing with new websites is that it has a “sandbox phase” which goes from 3-9 months (varies). This sandbox phase is the best time for a new website to put up a good SEO foundation as these months can serve as a baseline of how effective your SEO strategy is.

This means, that if your website was not able to improve in clicks and impressions after the sandbox period then there must be something that you’re not doing right yet.

Next up is the website’s clicks and impressions from when it first went live up to the first week of October.

Now the thing with new websites is that it has a “sandbox phase” which goes from 3-9 months (varies). This sandbox phase is the best time for a new website to put up a good SEO foundation as these months can serve as a baseline of how effective your SEO strategy is.

This means, that if your website was not able to improve in clicks and impressions after the sandbox period then there must be something that you’re not doing right yet.

Next up is the website’s clicks and impressions from when it first went live up to the first week of October.

The Solution

The website has 11-12k pages (as of today) and this means that Google Search Console needs more than one sitemap to accommodate all the pages of the website. So this is what I did on the first day after a baseline audit last November. See Image by swiping to theright

The Result

While there are a lot of backend issues that needed a fix for this website, and a number of them are still in its ongoing optimization (for context on why optimization is ongoing is that this website has about 12k pages) here’s how having the right sitemap has impacted the website, especially as it has helped content be recognized.

You can see that even before the supposed end of their sandbox period, the site was able veer away from 0 clicks in a day and continues to increase their total impressions in a day.

While the website still has a lot to improve on its SEO, you can see how a simple submission of the right sitemap can have a great impact on your website.

“Do I need a sitemap?“

Of course! You need to submit your sitemap to search engines so your website will be discovered and start showing up on the searches.

But this also goes to say that just having a sitemap is not enough to guarantee to have your website showing up on Google for the searches. You still need a good keyword research foundation, quality content, solid technical and on page implementations for you to guarantee getting out of the sandbox period because without those… you might become this website that was created last September 2022-present (see on the next image).

Imagine: You have a sitemap submitted correctly but you don’t have consistent quality publishing, no keyword research for articles, no technical and on page optimization… this is what it will look like in about a year…

Would you rather be never getting out of the sandbox?

Of course! You need to submit your sitemap to search engines so your website will be discovered and start showing up on the searches.

But this also goes to say that just having a sitemap is not enough to guarantee to have your website showing up on Google for the searches. You still need a good keyword research foundation, quality content, solid technical and on page implementations for you to guarantee getting out of the sandbox period because without those… you might become this website that was created last September 2022-present (see on the next image).