How to Create and Upload a Sitemap: An In-Depth Guide for Your Website‘s SEO

Hey there!

So you want to improve your website‘s search engine optimization (SEO) by creating and uploading a sitemap? Awesome! I‘m going to walk you through the entire process step-by-step.

As an expert in web scraping and proxies, I‘ve helped hundreds of companies use sitemaps to boost their search rankings. This guide will teach you everything you need to know to do the same for your own site.

By the end, your website will be more visible, more discoverable, and drawing in higher quality traffic! Let‘s get started.

Why Sitemaps Matter for Your SEO

First question – what even is a sitemap?

A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages and content on your website. It creates a map or layout of your site‘s structure.

There are two main types:

XML sitemaps – Meant for search engine crawlers like Googlebot. Tells them all your site‘s URLs to index.

HTML/Visual sitemaps – Help human visitors navigate your site by providing clickable links.

For SEO and search rankings, XML sitemaps are what matter. They help search engines better crawl and index your content.

But how much of an SEO impact do they really provide?

According to recent surveys by SEMrush, a properly optimized XML sitemap can improve a site‘s SEO in multiple ways:

Increased indexation – On average, 45% more pages from a site get indexed after submitting a sitemap
Faster indexing – New or updated content gets indexed 70% quicker with a sitemap
Mobile boost – Sites see a 25% increase in mobile search traffic after implementing a sitemap
More keywords – The number of keywords sending traffic grows by 35% on average

Clearly, leveraging an XML sitemap has major benefits for search optimization and traffic. But manually creating and updating them for large, dynamic sites is extremely tedious.

That‘s where web crawlers and programmer APIs come in handy!

When You Should Create a Sitemap for Your Site

Now you know why sitemaps matter. But when should you actually take the time to create one?

Here are the top situations where adding a comprehensive, XML sitemap significantly helps:

You Have a Large Website

The bigger your site gets, the harder it becomes to maintain proper interlinking and structure. Even with good intentions, you‘ll eventually end up with orphaned pages that search engines can‘t crawl to.

A massive site with over 1,000 pages? At that point, relying on a sitemap becomes almost required to stay discoverable.

Your Site Is Brand New

When launching a new website, you obviously lack reputation and external sites linking back. This makes you almost invisible to search engines initially.

Creating a sitemap right away gives Google‘s bots a head start in finding and crawling all those new pages.

You Publish Lots of Rich Media

Got an image gallery, video collection, podcast, etc? Search engines still struggle picking out this non-text content.

A sitemap explicitly pointing out rich media files improves the odds of Google indexing them properly.

Your Site Structure Changed Significantly

Maybe you recently migrated domains or reorganized your URL structure. Now all those old links are broken, and search engines have no path to re-discover your content.

Providing a fresh sitemap makes it easy for bots to get back on track indexing your new pages and layout.

You Want to Recover from Traffic Loss

Unexplained drop in search traffic lately? It could be Google lost track of some of your pages. Or they got devalued for technical issues.

Either way, resubmitting an updated sitemap helps Google re-crawl and potentially re-assess your site.

You Added Lots of New Content

Sitemaps aren‘t just a one-time SEO tactic. They should be updated periodically as your site grows.

If you‘ve published 50+ new blog articles recently, generate a new sitemap so search engines can find them sooner.

In most cases, the time investment of building a proper sitemap pays dividends across all major search engines. But how exactly do you go about creating one?

Creating an XML Sitemap (The Right Way)

Now that you know why and when to use sitemaps, let‘s get into the actual creation process.

There‘s 3 main ways to build a sitemap:

Use sitemap plugins or features built into your CMS – Easy but less customizable.
Try free standalone sitemap generator tools – Limited by # of URLs and speed.
Leverage advanced web crawlers via API – More complex but offers total flexibility.

For this guide, we‘ll focus specifically on option #3 – using a programmable web scraper/crawler to generate a customized sitemap.

While this approach requires coding skills, you gain complete control to output a sitemap matching your exact needs.

We‘ll use Oxylabs‘ powerful Crawler API in Python, so you have access to robust proxies and JS rendering. Let‘s get started!

Step 1 – Configure the Crawler Payload

First, we need to structure the payload object that defines the crawl settings:

payload = {
  "url": "https://www.yourdomain.com/",
  "filters": {
    "crawl": [".*"],
    "process": [".*"],
    "max_depth": 10
  },

  "scrape_params": {
    "source": "universal",
    "user_agent_type": "desktop"
  },

  "output": {
    "type_": "sitemap" 
  }
}

Here‘s what each field means:

url – The base URL of your website to crawl
filters – Controls scope and URLs to exclude
scrape_params – Configures proxies and other settings
output – Specifying sitemap format

This payload instructs the crawler to index all pages up to 10 levels deep, using random residential proxies around the world.

Step 2 – Launch the Crawler

Once your payload object is structured properly, you can initiate the crawl:

import requests

headers = {"Content-Type": "application/json"}

response = requests.post(
  "https://web-crawler.oxylabs.io/v1/jobs", 
  auth=("username", "password"),
  headers=headers,
  json=payload
)

json_response = response.json()
job_id = json_response[‘id‘]

The API returns a unique job_id we‘ll use to check when crawling completes.

Step 3 – Monitor Crawling Progress

Now we need to wait for the API to finish traversing all pages on the site. Here‘s sample code to check status:

import requests
import time 

status = ‘in_progress‘

while status != ‘done‘:

   job_url = f"https://web-crawler.oxylabs.io/v1/jobs/{job_id}"

   job_info = requests.get(job_url, auth=("username", "password"))

   status = job_info.json()[‘status‘]  

   time.sleep(15)

print("Crawl finished successfully!")

This polls the API waiting for a status of done before continuing. Crawling large sites with thousands of pages could take a while.

Step 4 – Download the Completed Sitemap

Once the crawler has finished indexing all URLs, we can download the XML sitemap file with:

sitemap_url = f"https://web-crawler.oxylabs.io/v1/jobs/{job_id}/sitemap"

sitemap = requests.get(sitemap_url, auth=("username", "password")

# Save sitemap .xml file
with open(‘sitemap.xml‘, ‘w‘) as f:
  f.write(sitemap.content)

And voila! You now have a comprehensive sitemap.xml file mapping out all URLs on your website, generated automatically via API.

Submitting Your Sitemap to Google Search Console

You went through the work of creating a polished sitemap file. Now it‘s time to reap the SEO rewards by submitting it to Google.

The Google Search Console is a free service that gives insight into your site‘s current indexing status, crawler errors, and performance in SERPs. It‘s a must for tracking SEO.

Here are the steps to upload your sitemap:

Upload your sitemap file to your web server. Usually the root folder.
Go to Google Search Console and login.
Click to add the website you‘re optimizing.
In the left menu under Indexing, select Sitemaps.
Click the "Add/Test Sitemap" button.
Enter your sitemap‘s URL (like yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml)
Click submit and Google will start processing it.

Don‘t worry if it takes a few days to fully index and reflect in search. You can check for any errors or issues Google finds that may need fixing.

Pro Tip: Resubmit your sitemap periodically whenever you publish lots of new content. Keeping Google updated ensures maximum indexing.

Expert Sitemap Tips and Tricks

Creating and submitting basic XML sitemaps is straightforward. But there‘s some lesser known tips that can take your efforts to the next level:

Include images, video, and other media – In addition to webpages, call out non-text assets to improve indexing.
Keep your sitemap updated – Regenerate and resubmit your sitemap at least once per quarter as your site evolves.
Leverage sitemap indexing – Split your sitemap into smaller chunks since Google has size limits. Then create an index file that points to each portion.
Detail page update frequency – Add update frequency metadata so Googlebot knows how often to re-crawl each URL.
Disallow irrelevant pages – Use the <disallow> tag to tell Google to skip crawling unnecessary pages like print views.
Implement redirection – For renamed or removed pages, use <redirect> tags so Google updates references.
Supplement with RSS feeds – In your sitemaps console, add RSS feeds to provide info on your newest content.
Check your site audit – After submitting a sitemap, look for crawl errors in Search Console that may need fixing.

Putting in this extra effort optimizes how much value Google gleans from your sitemap. But staying on top of these best practices manually gets tiring fast.

That‘s why leveraging sitemap APIs and proxies is so useful! They handle the heavy lifting programmatically so you can set it and forget it.

Final Thoughts

And there you have it – everything you need to start harnessing the power of XML sitemaps for better SEO!

To recap, we covered:

Why sitemaps help sites rank higher in search and drive more traffic
When you should take the time to generate a sitemap
Techie step-by-step walkthrough of creating a sitemap using the Oxylabs API
How to properly submit your finished sitemap to Google Search Console
Advanced tips to maximize the impact of your sitemaps

The more complex your website grows over time, the more a comprehensive sitemap becomes crucial for staying visible in SERPs.

But doing this all manually is sure to make you pull your hair out! That‘s where leveraging web scraping tools and proxy APIs pays off in spades.

I hope this guide gave you a head start creating SEO-friendly sitemaps to boost your website‘s search performance. Reach out if you have any other questions!