A sitemap is a file that contains a list of the pages and different types of content on your website, as well as information about how they’re related. It can be in the form of an XML file or an HTML page. The primary purpose of a sitemap is to help search engines find, crawl, and index your site more efficiently. It also shows search engines which pages are most important and provides useful information about them. There are four main types of sitemaps:

• Normal XML Sitemap: This is the most common type of sitemap. It’s usually in the form of an XML file that links to different pages on your website.
• Video Sitemap: Used specifically to help Google understand video content on your page.
• News Sitemap: Helps Google find content on sites that are approved for Google News.
• Image Sitemap: Helps Google find all of the images hosted on your site.

Sitemaps are important for SEO because they allow search engines to find your essential pages quickly, even if your pages end up without internal links pointing to them, making them hard to find. Having a sitemap is an important part of SEO, and it wont hurt your SEO efforts. There are also a few special cases where a sitemap really comes in handy, such as when your site is brand new and only has a handful external backlinks, or when you run an ecommerce site with a large number of pages.