XML sitemaps help improve SEO by helping search engines index site more efficiently.

XML sitemaps are a way to provide search engines with a comprehensive list of all the pages on your site.

Technical SEO includes creating and submitting an XML sitemap to Google and other search engines to help them index your site more efficiently.

XML sitemaps help improve search engine indexing by providing search engines with a roadmap of a website’s content. This allows search engines to quickly and easily discover and index all the pages on a website. Here is how search engines use XML sitemaps:

1. Crawling: Search engine bots first discover a website’s XML sitemap by following the link in the website’s robots.txt file or by finding it through other means. They then crawl the XML sitemap to discover all the URLs of the website.
2. Indexing: Once the search engine bots have discovered all the URLs of a website through the XML sitemap, they can then start indexing the pages. Indexing involves analyzing the content of each page and adding it to the search engine’s database of pages.
3. Ranking: After a page has been indexed, search engines can then use various ranking algorithms to determine its relevance to specific search queries. This involves analyzing various on-page and off-page factors such as the page’s content, backlinks, and user engagement signals.

Here’s an example of what an XML sitemap might look like for a website:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
    <url>
        <loc>https://example.com/</loc>
        <lastmod>2022-03-10T00:00:00+00:00</lastmod>
        <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
        <priority>1.0</priority>
    </url>
    <url>
        <loc>https://example.com/about</loc>
        <lastmod>2022-03-10T00:00:00+00:00</lastmod>
        <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
        <priority>0.8</priority>
    </url>
    <url>
        <loc>https://example.com/products</loc>
        <lastmod>2022-03-10T00:00:00+00:00</lastmod>
        <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
        <priority>0.7</priority>
    </url>
    <url>
        <loc>https://example.com/contact</loc>
        <lastmod>2022-03-10T00:00:00+00:00</lastmod>
        <changefreq>yearly</changefreq>
        <priority>0.6</priority>
    </url>
</urlset>

Above is an example, the XML sitemap contains four URLs of a website.

• Each URL has a <loc> tag that specifies the page’s URL, a <lastmod> tag that specifies when the page was last modified, a <changefreq> tag that specifies how frequently the page is updated.
• A <priority> tag specifies the page’s priority in relation to other pages on the website.

It is best practices to use and XML sitemap.

XML sitemaps help websites ensure that all their pages are quickly and easily discovered and indexed by search engines, which can ultimately lead to increased visibility and traffic.