Best practices for migrating an html sitemap? Or just get rid of it all together?
-
We are migrating a very large site to a new CMS and I'm trying to determine the best way to handle all the links (~15k) in our html sitemap. The developers don't see the purpose of using an html sitemap anymore and I have yet to come up with a good reason why we should migrate rather than just get rid of the sitemap since it is not very useful to users. The html sitemap was created about 6 years ago when page rank sculpting was a high priority.
Currently, since we already have an XML sitemap, I'm not sure that there's really a need for a html sitemap, other than to maintain all the internal links. How valuable are the internal links found in an html sitemap? And will it be a problem if we remove these from our link profile? 15,000 links sounds significant, but they only account for less than .5% of our internal links.
What do all you think?
-
any thoughts on the impact of removing the internal links in the sitemap? will this hurt our domain authority? Or given the low amount of links compared to our whole link profile, is it not that significant to cause concern?
-
I think the need for html site maps has past, they can be useful for visitors to the site but when you get to higher number of links it can become mind blowing and confusing.
You should aim to have good hierarchic structured navigation on the site with plenty of use of breadcrumbs to make it easier to navigate the site.
what ever you do -make sure you have the keep the XML site map in place.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
No structured sitemap
Hello We face this problem that a lot of sitemaps are structurally not good. In this case we used the WP sitemap plugin to generate the website sitemap and Google XML sitemaps to generate the sitemap for Google. We also bought the Yoast premium plugin, but we can read in the backend that the plugin XML sitemaps may cause problems in combination with Yoast. Normally the Google XML sitemap generator improves SEO using sitemaps for the best indexation by search engines, but the structure is not as we want it. Will Yoast be a better solution to generate structured sitemaps? This is a section from the current sitemap of www.rovana.be. Products Reepgordijn Plissé - Dupli gordijn Duo rolgordijn Paneelgordijn Jaloezie - Vlinderjaloezie Poorten Muggenramen Velux accessoires Rolgordijn Vouwgordijn Buitenjaloezie Voorzetrolluik Glasdak Glaswand Vouwdak Pergola Verlichting - Verwarming Automatisering Lamellendak Verandazonwering Screens Koepel zonwering This is how we think the sitemap should look like. We would like more structure in the different product categories. Producten Zonwering Zonnescherm
Technical SEO | | conversal
Screens
Verandazonwering
Koepel zonwering
Automatisering
Verwarming – verlichting Terrasoverkapping Lamellendak
Pergola
VouwdaK
Glasdak
Glaswand Raamdecoratie Rolgorijn
Paneelgordijn
Duo rolgordijn
Vouwgordijn
Plissé – dupli gordijn
Jaloezie – vlinderjaloezie
Reepgordijn
Velux accessoires Rolluiken Voorzetrolluiken
Buitenjaloezie
Velux accessoires Muggenramen Muggenraam
Velux accessoires Poorten Sectionaal poort Is this technically possible to create similar sitemaps in WordPress and how exactly do we proceed here? What is the impact of these changes on SEO? How can we make this work? Thanks!0 -
New SEO manager needs help! Currently only about 15% of our live sitemap (~4 million url e-commerce site) is actually indexed in Google. What are best practices sitemaps for big sites with a lot of changing content?
In Google Search console 4,218,017 URLs submitted 402,035 URLs indexed what is the best way to troubleshoot? What is best guidance for sitemap indexation of large sites with a lot of changing content? view?usp=sharing
Technical SEO | | Hamish_TM1 -
Struggling to get indexed and ranked
I am working on a brand new website and really struggling to get the site indexed and listed for it's business name! I don't normally struggle and have got clients ranked for much more challenging keywords so I'm a bit stuck! The site is a new domain and has been live for about two months. The business previously used an old domain and this has been correctly 301'd to the new domain. There is no duplicate content with any other website when checked through Copyscape.com Webmaster Tools has been set-up and verified and this shows the site is being crawled but in Google site:www.website.com.au shows no pages as being indexed. Google Places has been set-up and verified, the site has also been added to local citation sites. There are also a few incoming links from other sources. Robots.txt is fine and has been checked. Business name mentioned in the title tag, footer and throughout the site. Does anyone have any ideas how I might be able to get ranked or is it just a waiting game? Or have I missed out something really obvious?? My last step is doing a crawl test to see if this brings up anything I have missed. Thanks Karen
Technical SEO | | Karen_Dauncey0 -
Sitemap error
Hi, When i search for my blog post in google i get sitemap results, and when i click on it i get an error, here is the screen shot http://screencast.com/t/lXOIiTnVZR1 http://screencast.com/t/MPWkuc4Ocixy How can i fix that, it loos like if i just add www. it work just fine. Thanks
Technical SEO | | tonyklu0 -
.co.uk/index.html or just .co.uk - my on-page reports are different for both - why?
It looks like the same thing, yet it has a different on-page report for each version - why is this. Please share your ideas with me on this. The original url is http://bath.waspkilluk.co.uk/index.html. Many Thanks - Simon.
Technical SEO | | simonberenyi0 -
What to include on a sitemap for a huge site?
I have a very large site and I'm not sure what all to include on the sitemap page. We have categories such as items1, items2 and in the items1 category are 100 vendors with their individual vendor pages. Should I link all 100 vendor pages on the sitemap or just the main items1 category?
Technical SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Basic SEO HTML
Hello Everyone, One place I am weak is coding for SEO. I need to get better. One question I do have is can anyone explain why it's important to place css and java script files in an external file? How do you do this and how do you know if it's already being done? If it has not been done on a site is it hard to go back and do? I understand this is important from a site load time issue Thanks, Bill P.S. Can anyone recommend a resource where I can learn proper html coding for SEO? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0 -
301 redirects inside sitemaps
I am in the process of trying to get google to follow a large number of old links on site A to site B. Currently I have 301 redirects as well a cross domain canonical tags in place. My issue is that Google is not following the links from site A to site B since the links no longer exist in site A. I went ahead and added the old links from site A into site A's sitemap. Unfortunately Google is returning this message inside webmaster tools: When we tested a sample of URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs redirect to other locations. We recommend that your Sitemap contain URLs that point to the final destination (the redirect target) instead of redirecting to another URL. However I do not understand how adding the redirected links from site B to the sitemap in site A will remove the old links. Obviously Google can see the 301 redirect and the canonical tag but this isn't defined in the sitemap as a direct correlation between site A and B. Am I missing something here?
Technical SEO | | jmsobe0