Is it Wortwhile to have a HTML site map for a Large Site
-
We are a large, enterprise site with many pages (some on our CMS and some old pages that exist outside our CMS). Every month we submit various an XML site map.
Some pages on our site can no longer be found via following links from one page to another (orphan pages). Some of those pages are important and some not.
Is it worth our while to create a HTML site map? Does any one have any recent stats or blog posts to share, showing how a HTML site map may have benefited a large site.
Many thanks
-
Hi Patrick,
While an HTML site map is one way to add internal links to these pages, it may not be enough to get them to rank for anything (even if they do get back into Google's index thanks to the new links). In addition to the HTML site map, if you choose to build one, I would take a look at these pages and see how they can be better integrated into the main site. What are some user paths that might make sense for people to take to arrive at these pages? Bringing these orphan pages back into the fold will have a higher SEO impact and also increase the likelihood that people find these pages by browsing your site. I know this is a solution that will take more time and effort, so in the short term you might try the HTML site map and see how far that gets you. Good luck!
-
Thanks Keri,
On our enterprise site we have some really good pages that are unfortunately not connected to the rest of the site. I was thinking of the HTML site map as a way to get some connection to those pages. would this be a viable tactic?
-
For an HTML sitemap, you don't necessarily need to include every single page. One example that Ryan Kent often brings up in these conversations is Verizon Wireless's html site map at http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/sitemap.jsp. It lists their major categories, you can find where you're going, but it doesn't list every single page on their site.
I have no stats to share about their site, but it is a useful site map if you're browsing the site and not sure where to go for something.
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
-
Ranking Issue for New Site
Hi all, I have got a specific SEO challenge. 6 months ago, we started to build an eCommerce site (located in the UK). In order to speed up the site launch, we copied the entire site over from an existing site based in Ireland. Now, the new UK site has been running for 5 months. Google has indexed many pages, which is good, but we can't rank high (position: between 20-30 for most pages). We thought it was because of content duplication in spite of different regions. So we tried to optimize the pages for the UK site to make them more UK-related and avoid content duplication. I've also used schema to tell google it's a UK-based site and set up Google my business and got more local citations. Besides, If you could give me any suggestions, it'd be perfect.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Insightful_Media
Thank you so much for your time and advice.1 -
Redirecting an Entire Site to a Page on Another Site?
So I have a site that I want to shut down http://vowrenewalsmaui.com and redirect to a dedicated Vow Renewals page I am making on this site here: https://simplemauiwedding.net. My main question is: I don't want to lose all the authority of the pages and if I just redirect the site using my domain registrar's 301 redirect it will only redirect the main URL not all of the supporting pages, to my knowledge. How do I not lose all the authority of the supporting pages and still shut down the site and close down my site builder? I know if I leave the site up I can redirect all of the individual pages to corresponding pages on the other site, but I want to be done with it. Just trying to figure out if there is a better way than I know of. The domain is hosted through GoDaddy.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | photoseo10 -
Redirecting Ecommerce Site
Hi I'm working on a big site migration I'm setting up redirects for all the old categories to point to the new ones. I'm doing this based on relevancy, the categories don't match up exactly but I've tried to redirect to the most relevant alternative. Would this be the right approach?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Site: inurl: Search
I have a site that allows for multiple filter options and some of these URL's have these have been indexed. I am in the process of adding the noindex, nofollow meta tag to these pages but I want to have an idea of how many of these URL's have been indexed so I can monitor when these have been re crawled and dropped. The structure for these URL's is: http://www.example.co.uk/category/women/shopby/brand1--brand2.html The unique identifier for the multiple filtered URL's is --, however I've tried using site:example.co.uk inurl:-- but this doesn't seem to work. I have also tried using regex but still no success. I was wondering if there is a way around this so I can get a rough idea of how many of these URL's have been indexed? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GrappleAgency0 -
On-site links
Hi everybody, There's a lot of information about getting sitewide backlinks, but so few about on-site optimization. Is there a maximum of links to put on a page ? Is there a maximum of link that a page should receive ? etc ... ? So, what is the optimal strategy ? And I'm only concerned about on-page and on-site link, not backlinks commming from other sites. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidPilon0 -
Site Structure Question
Hi All, Got a question about site structure, I currently have a website where everything is hosted on the root of the domain. See example below: site.com/men site.com/men-shorts site.com/men-shorts-[product name] I want to change the structure to site.com/men/shorts/[product-name] I have asked a couple of SEOs and some agree with me that the structure needs to be changed and some say that as long as I dictate the structure with internal links and breadcrumbs the URL structure doesn't matter... What do you guys think? Many thanks, Carlos
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
Looking for guest blogging sites
Hello, Does anyone have a list or a few good guest blogging sites like Myblogguest.com and guestblogit.com (is this a good on?) where you get a link back in return for a quality post? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Do sites like these really work?
http://www.linkaloha.com/ This company claims to have a good tool. To me it looks like spam. They claim to automate link building and they claim to use Googles Panda to their advantage. This site does however use link diversity, not sure about how relevant the sources are for each keyword... Would this fall into black hat or gray area SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0