What is a sitemap?

A sitemap is a useful and practical tool for improving your site’s organization and structure. It speeds up the work that search engine crawlers need to do to scan and assess your site so it can be properly indexed in search. And it helps others more easily navigate your website, creating a better overall user experience.

There are really two types of sitemaps out there:

• XML sitemaps are used by search engine spiders to extract important information about your site.
• HTML sitemaps are meant for humans and act as a navigational tool on your website.

XML sitemaps are by far more common, but both are useful for improving your SEO.

Here’s an example of human-friendly HTML map:

And a more robot-centric XML map:

For the purpose of a site audit, we’ll focus on XML sitemaps; that said, consider whether your site can benefit from an HTML map, as well.

How to pull your sitemap

There are several methods and dozens of tools to use to pull a sitemap.

I’ve outlined a few in this video:

1. Use Google to see all active, searchable pages. This is useful for high-level work, research, and topical content references, but it won’t give you a full breakdown of a site.
2. Manually pull an xml sitemap to view a sitemap the way crawlers do
3. Manually pull an xml sitemap using a website crawler like Screaming Frog SEO Spider.

3 Ways to quickly pull the sitemap for any website

Why sitemaps are important for your website audit

A sitemap offers a complete picture of the structure and health of your website in one bird’s-eye view. It’s easy to get lost in the details when you’re looking for site issues: you can fall down keyword rabbit holes, spend hours looking through your competitors’ sites trying to figure out why they are ahead of you in organic search and get frustrated brainstorming new content for your blog.

A sitemap is a simple approach that can help you get started and keep you on track to tackle the biggest—and most impactful—issues first.

How to audit your sitemap

Once you’ve pulled your sitemap, you’ll want to audit it based on a few different things:

Technical errors

Look for 404s. These are deadlinks that can weigh down your site over time and negatively affect your SEO. Also, note 302 redirects. These are meant to be temporary redirects, so it’s a good time to either pull those or make them a longer-term 301.

Navigation & site structure

Do you have blog posts hanging off the root domain while others are nested under a /blog/ prefix? Are your URLs looking long and confusing? Do you have non-intuitive category pages? Think of your site map as a table of contents for your website. Is yours clear and easy to follow?

On-Page SEO

Make sure your active pages have title tags and meta descriptions, proper header formatting (Does every page start with a Header 1? Are you using H2s and H3s properly?)

How to audit your competitor’s sitemap

This is one of my favorite ways to use sitemap data because it gives you a ‘look under the hood’ of your competitors’ content and website strategy.

Once you’ve pulled a competitor’s sitemap, zero in their site structure and content.

Clarity

Are they auditing their site? Do they use on-page SEO best practices, clear URL structures, and intuitive organization? If not, you most certainly have a big opportunity to creep ahead of them in organic search by completing this work.

Content holes

Drill into their blog or resources section and spend some time tagging and organizing their content. What are they missing that you know you can add to your site? What do you have that they don’t? What do they have that you don’t?

If you really want to be strategic, compare the content for multiple competitors and look at length, recency, and topical coverage to see where you can make improvements.

By comparing their content to your own, you can generate new ideas for your own website, and see where you—and your competitor—are falling behind.

Keyword opportunities

Try pulling the sitemap for a competitor in your vertical that is always in the top spots in organic search. Then pull a mid-tier competitor. Look through their top-performing content and cross-reference these pages with a keyword tool (I use Keysearch. Ahrefs is also excellent). By understanding what keywords they’re ranking on, you can create new content and optimize your existing content for these phrases.

Try to run a quarterly website audit if you can to identify new content, optimize your keywords, and ensure your site if up-to-speed and functioning at its best.