The sitemap is one of the most important elements of the site. Often, two are created at the same time - for pages and for pictures. How do you know if you need a separate site image map? Very easy.
If the structure of the site is as simple as possible (10-15 pages), then separate sitemap images are not needed. If the web resource is large or works on some engine, then it is desirable to create it. How to do this will be discussed in this article.
What you need to know about the features of the image sitemap
Before you create an image map, read some useful guidelines:
- In the image map, not only lists of URLs are specified, but also special tags. This is how search engines get the necessary data based on images.
- The sitemap specifies up to 1000 graphic objects for each page.
- The image map of the site is placed not only in the sitemap.xml file with a list of pages. You can also create a separate file, naming it sitemap images or sitemap-2 (however, do not forget to write the required line in robots.txt ).
- Yandex does not recognize tags invented to describe images. To avoid warnings, it needs to "show" the usual sitemap.xml. And Google - both options.
Surprisingly, most web resources do not have a sitemap for pictures. Some users do not attach much importance to it and do not spend time on its creation. And the rest are completely unaware of him.
And this is bad, because sometimes search engines are not able to index all the files of a web resource. For example, if they are loaded via Javascript. And this leads to poor indexing - which is especially dangerous for large sites with a huge number of pages and many nesting levels.
Plus, don't forget about the possibility of participating in an image search. From the outside, this channel seems insignificant, but it can also give good traffic. The main thing is that the hosting of the site is reliable, and the web resource can withstand the load during peak hours.
We create and configure an image sitemap
You can choose from 3 ways to create and configure a site image map:
- Manually. This option is justified only if there are few pictures on the site.
- With the help of online services. Most of them are paid, but there are also free analogues. In any online service, you only need to enter the URL and wait a few minutes. Then it remains to copy the generated code into a file and place it in the root directory of the site with the extension .xml.
- With the help of plugins. This is probably the easiest option. There is no need to create a file, place it in the root directory - plugins do it automatically. You just need to go to the settings and select the list of tags that will be displayed.
As you can see, creating a sitemap for images is as simple as possible. And the profit from it is quite good. Therefore, if you have a large Internet project, create 2 sitemaps: a normal one and one for pictures. A standard sitemap will be enough for Yandex, but Google will be happy with both versions.
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