What is the value of having an HTML sitemap on site?
-
For years now whenever we recreate a site we always set up both an xml sitemap and an html sitemap page.
Stupid question maybe - but what is the value to having an html sitemap on site?
-
I've asked the same thing in the past and told by authoritative users in this forum the following: "If your site is structurally sound, you shouldn't need a sitemap."
I've bought into that principle.
If customers scroll to the bottom of my pages without finding or keyword searching what they need, I've probably not done a good job of setting it up.
Put into practice, we're in the process of revamping to a top navigation with search suggest features and left nav filtering functionality.
-
I tend to think a sitemap has plenty of value for some sites.
1. It is a useful tool for users to navigate your site or get a high level view of the content
2. It is a useful page for search engine spiders to crawl the site with every (or most) pages only a link away (and the sitemap is often linked from every page as well albeit in a footer link).
Obviously, search engines only crawl a given amount of links on a page so take that into consideration and break your site map up into chunks of 100 links or so - no hard and fast rules here as it's going to be different for amazon than for a small one man band operating in a small town or city but 100 links is a good starting point.
You could always review the analytics - do people use this page? Does it get crawled? Is it a useful link to drop into given posts and pages to aid users in their navigation of the site?
It's almost like a sitemap is the big board that you see in the shopping mall with all the floors, areas and shops on. In many cases it is a useful navigational tool for users with some search engines benefits so what's not to like?
There are no concrete answers here but think about your users and if this could benefit them then it is nearly always a good thing and if it kicks back some search benefits as well then all the better.
Hope that helps
Marcus
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
-
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 -
Is it detrimental to make a site wide change from .html to .shtml (all pages)?
We have an established website with decent domain authority. My developer inherited the site from another developer and is recommending that we convert all pages from the .html to the .shmtl From an SEO perspective, would this hurt us? Also, if this is not an issue, would updating the canonical help us, or does the canonical setting only deal with the "www." vs. "non-www"? Any insights will be appreciated greatly. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
Site structure headache
Hello all, I'm struggling to get to grips with a websites site structure. I appreciate that quality content is key etc, and the more content the better, but then I have issues with regards to doorway pages. For example im now starting to develop a lot of ecommerce websites and want to promote this service. should we have pages that detail all of the ins and outs of ecommerce - or should we simplify it to a couple of pages. what is best practice? Also isn't a content hub similar to having doorway pages? let me know what you think! William
Technical SEO | | wseabrook0 -
Local site under generic domain
Howdy Mozers, We have main website on .com domain and local websites for each language like .es, .fr, .in etc. We decided to move all local sites under main domain .com using subdirectories with gTLDs. One of the local sites has a manual penalty. Right now we are redirecting local site which have penalty using 302 redirect. So my question is. Will 302 redirect hurt our main site? Is there any other way to redirect visitors from local site without passing penalty? We have few thousands monthly users who are still using local domain links to get to our site, so we can't remove redirect at all. Best Regards,
Technical SEO | | juris_l
Juris0 -
What to do if my site was De-indexed?
Hello fellow SEOs, I have been doing SEO for about a year now, I'm not expert, but I know enough to get the job done. I'm learning everyday about better techniques. So enough about that... Tonight I noticed that my site has, I believe, been de-indexed. Its a fairly new site, as we just launched it a few days ago and I went in and did all the title tags and meta. I still have to go in to do the h1 and h2 tags...plus add some alt tags and anchor text. Well anyways, after a couple of days after the title tags were implemented. I was propagating all over the place. Using my keyword tool here...I was number on the first page in Google for 71 or the 88 keywords. My new site was just indexed yesterday and thats when i noticed all my keywords. Well today I noticed that I am no where to be found, even if i type in my company's name. PLEASE help me out...any advice would be appreciated. Thank you. p.s. could my competitors could have done something to my site? just wondering... The website is www.eggheadconsultants.com
Technical SEO | | Jegghead1 -
Site maps, Is there any benefit?
I have a relatively simple and small site (60 pages). All of it is crawlable and there is nothing I want non follow. So, is there any real benefit to a sitemap since Google can get to all the site anyway? Do they give the site more credence or something because it's there? I guess as an aside, are there any favorite sites that will generate a site map? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Banknotes0 -
Google and QnA sites
My website has a QnA site - a bit like this one except it's not private to premium members. It is a page with a left colomn for category links and it has a list of recently asked questions, each question is a link to view the full question and answers etc. Does google know this is a QnA ? Or will it say - hey, there are far too many links on this page, tut tut. Is there anything I can do to help it understand what the page is.
Technical SEO | | borderbound0 -
Google.ca is showing our US site instead of our Canada Site
When our Canadian users who search on google.ca for our brand (e.g. Travelocity, Travelocity hotels, etc.), the first few results our from our US site (travelocity.com) rather than our Canadian site (travelocity.ca). In Google Webmaster Tools, we've adjusted the geotargeting settings to focus on the appropriate locale, but the wrong country TLD is still coming up at the top via google.ca. What's the best way to ensure our Canadian site comes up instead of the US site on google.ca? Thanks, Tory Smith
Technical SEO | | travelocitysearch
Travelocity0