YLB ScorePart I, Can people find you?
There is no map of your site for search engines
A sitemap is a short list of every page on your site, in a form search engines read. Without it they find your pages by following links, which works, but slowly, and some pages may never be found at all.
Most website software makes one automatically; it may only need switching on.
Worth about 1 point of your 100 for a typical businessAbout afternoon, by your web person
See for yourself
Open your website address with /sitemap.xml on the end. A list of your pages means it exists.
How to fix it
- Switch on the sitemap in your website software, or have your web person generate one.
- Mention it in your
robots.txtfile so search engines find it without being told.
The technical version, for your web person
sitemap.xml. We request /sitemap.xml and award the mark on a 200 response.
What the check reads. The sitemap the page inventory already fetched this scan answered under 400 (robots.txt Sitemap: lines first, then /sitemap.xml). Falls back to the old single probe when there is no inventory.
This is one of the checks in a YLB Score report. Every report is free, read by a person before it goes out, and written so that you can act on it without us. Ask for yours.