The Sitemap is a file that the search engine 'bots (or robots) go out and read (also known as crawl) to discover the structure of your website. Keeping your sitemap up to date is good for your search engine optimization and when an error crops up, it can cause some of your web pages to not get indexed.

With new websites that are small, this generally isn't a problem. But, as time goes on and you begin to rearrange a few things, you may need to resubmit your sitemap or fix some errors such as broken links that might result in a 404 error page.

More on 404 error pages here:

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/easy-cust...

Immediately after creating that Custom 404 Error Page training, I was asked about how to discover and fix broken or "dead" links. So, instead of trying to explain it, I thought I would go ahead and show you. :-)

Firstly, if you have a new website, as indicated within the WA training, you should submit it to Google - See Kyle's training here:

Creating and Submitting Your Sitemap to Google

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/setting-u...

Secondly, in order to avoid the dreaded and embarrassing 404 error page, you should periodically check Google Search Console (formerly known and Google Webmaster Tools) and ensure you don't have any broken links.

I have recently been revamping my website with a much more highly optimized theme and sharing plugin. More on that later. But, revamping a website can have some "cleanup" issues such as 404 pages from dead links as a result of deleting some pages and posts.

You can use your SEO plugin and many times regenerate a new sitemap and resubmit. But, additionally, you should know how to check for broken or dead links and how to remove a bad URL from the Google index. So, that's what this training is all about.

Buckle up! Let's dig in!