The sitemap is one of the most important elements of a website. Often, two are created simultaneously — one for pages and one for images. How do you know if you need a separate image sitemap? It's very simple.
If the website structure is very simple (10-15 pages), then a separate image sitemap is not required. If the web resource is large or runs on a CMS — then it's advisable to create an image sitemap. How to do this — read further in our article.
What You Need to Know About the Features of an Image Sitemap
Sitemap images are a special type of XML sitemap required by search engines to find and index all images on a web project. It helps website owners improve SEO, speed up media content indexing, and increase visibility in Google Images.
Before creating an image sitemap, check out these helpful recommendations:
- XML documents indicate not only lists of URLs but also special tags. This way, search engines receive the necessary data about the images.
- Up to 1000 graphic objects can be added to the sitemap for each page.
- The image sitemap is not only placed in the sitemap.xml file with the list of pages. You can also create a separate file and name it sitemap images or sitemap-2 (but don't forget to add the necessary line in robots.txt).
Strangely enough, most websites lack an image sitemap. Some users do not attach much importance to it and do not spend time creating it. And others simply do not know about it.
And that’s unfortunate, since sometimes search engines cannot index all files of the web resource. For example, if they are loaded via JavaScript. This leads to poor indexing — which is especially critical for large sites with a huge number of pages and multiple levels of nesting.
Also, don’t forget about the possibility of being included in image search results. At first glance, this promotion method may seem insignificant, but it can still bring decent traffic. The key is that your website hosting should be reliable and the web resource should withstand peak loads.
How to Create an Image Sitemap
You can create and configure an image sitemap in one of three ways:
- Manually. This option is only justified if there are few images on the site. You need to create an image-sitemap.xml file in Notepad and add the following code (just don’t forget to customize it for your web project). Then add the file to the root directory and specify the path in robots.txt.
- Using online services. Most of them are paid, but there are also free alternatives. One of the best is XML-Sitemaps.com. You need to enter the homepage URL, wait a few minutes, download the XML file, and add it to the root folder of your web resource.
- Using plugins. This is perhaps the easiest option. You don’t need to create a file or place it in the root directory — plugins do this automatically. You only need to go into the settings and choose the list of tags to be displayed. Some of the most popular WordPress plugins are Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and All in One SEO.
As you can see, creating an image sitemap is very simple, and the benefits from it are quite decent. Therefore, if you have a large web project — create two sitemaps: one regular and one for images. After creation, don’t forget to add the sitemap to Google Search Console.
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