Sitemaps: A Quick SEO Win for New Websites

I recently added sitemaps to a few Rails-based marketing sites I manage for clients, and within weeks, we saw a noticeable boost in search traffic. It reminded me that not many people know about them or have totally forgotten about them (it's quite an old but effective SEO technique). Even fewer know about Google Search Console (not Google Analytics), the official Google tool where you can submit sitemaps and request indexing for new pages as soon as you publish them. So wanted to give a quick primer about what a sitemap is, how you can create it yourself in Rails, and how to submit it to Google. Sometimes it's these small technical things that can make a big difference. SEO is all about helping search engines better understand your website's content, which helps your target readers find your website faster. If you're selling anything online, better SEO = more traffic to your website = more sales for whatever you're selling.