Are HTML sitemaps still in use today?
-
I'm trying to help a client understand the importance of having a well-organized HTML site map as a method of helping usability. As part of this process, I spent some time searching for good examples of well-organized HTML site maps, and found that many sites don't offer one (including SEOmoz). I'm wondering if webmasters and/or SEOers think they aren't valuable any longer?
-
It's always interesting to see how sitemap.html performs in terms of pageviews. According to Analytics at least, many users find them useful -- and that's enough for me to usually want to recommend including one.
Try it, test it, and if users find it valuable then keep it. Like it or not, I think it's true to say that there's still a small segment of web users who use sitemaps as on of their main methods of navigation so I think on that basis, there's an argument to include them.
-
I still use "static" sitemaps with my clients. These can be especially welcomed by users if you have a large site with many categories/sub-categories. Of course from a usability standpoint, your site navigation should pose no problem to your customers finding what they are looking for
-
Thanks for your reply, Steve. I'd be interested in hearing from others to see if they have similar thoughts.
-
It doesn't hurt to have them, but I don't think there is any real benefit to them anymore for the search engines. They should be able to find all of your pages by following the regular links on your site. That being said, I still have them on my sites.
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
-
Using Multiple links/names for the same product?
I am being asked to change these product links on the home page: Home/Condo
Web Design | | RoxBrock
Watercraft/Boat to Home
Condo
Watercraft
Boat (Along with several other product links) How does this affect the customer experience/usability, and SEO? Is it a good idea or is it confusing? Thank you.0 -
Interlinking using Dynamic URLs Versus Static URLs
Hi Guys, Could you kindly help us in choosing best approach out of mentioned below 2 cases. Case. 1 -We are using: We interlink our static pages(www.abc.com/jobs-in-chennai) through footer, navigation & by showing related searches. Self referential Canonical tags have been implemented. Case. 2 -We plan to use: We interlink our Dynamic pages(www.abc.com/jobs-in-chennai?source=footer) through footer, navigation & by showing related searches. Canonical tags have been implemented on dynamic urls pointing to corresponding static urls Query 1. Which one is better & expected to improve rankings. Query 2. Will shifting to Case 2 negatively affect our existing rankings or traffic. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
ECWID Ecommerce Sitemaps (Lack of)
Does anyone know if the lack of sitemaps on ECWID built sites is a negative for SEO? Does Google somehow index these sites and do they penalize because sites can't include the urls in sitemaps? Also, any idea how to build a sitemap to include ECWID shopping carts?
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Does IE9 use doucument mode IE9 Standards or Quirks???
Trying to set up the styling on a new Shopping Cart, and having trouble with Internet Explorer (IE) When I view it in IE, I click on F12 to identify the code viewer (like FireBug) and it lets me choose to view it using the browser IE9 or earlier. So far, so good... But right next to the browser selector is the "Document Mode" selector and sometimes it says "Quirks Mode" and sometimes it says "IE9 Standards" (when using IE9 browser) - and parts of the page styling goes crazy when I switch back and forth from Quirks to Standards. Help! Which does IE9 and IE8 actually use? Does it have to work for both? Is there a way to force it to one or the other? Any guidance or tips is appreciated. Thanks, Greg
Web Design | | GregB1230 -
We mapped 301's, uploaded htacces, submitted sitemap and still TANKED after redesign?
Hi All, We had some great rankings on store.jrdunn.com since 2006 and we switched to just http://jrdunn.com with cleaner url structures about 13 days ago. We were on Volusion now Magento. We mapped out a couple of thousand of 301's and carefully choose very similar landing pages on the new site. Uploaded an htcaccess file and submitted sitemap in GWT. We have been correcting 404's and watching GWT like a hawk. We dropped on several almost all of our great terms from page one to page 14 or 15 on the new site. We don't even rank yet on our own brand terms ?!?. ORGANIC traffic has dropped more than 50%. The only thing in our plan that we couldn't execute was using the "we moved" tool in GWT because they don't allow switches from subdomains to be entered. Bummer! Do you think missing that one thing caused the plummet? In retrospect perhaps we changed too many things at once ie hosting, cms and going down to root url. Anyways, I don't know what we can do from here but we'd sure be silly not to ask! Anybody's suggestions or past experiences with this situation would be huge! Thanks so much in advance, Sean
Web Design | | seandunn0 -
Does using role="heading" instead of H1 in HTML code affects SEO?
Does using role="heading" instead of affect SEO? http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/wiki/Headings_using_role%3Dheading
Web Design | | LNEseo0 -
Redirect From .aspx to .html if already indexed - Website Redesign
Hi Guys I would like to know if somebody could possibly shed some light on this for me. We are in the process of re-designing our site, but we are keeping all of our content in terms of site structure, internal linking etc. the same. Now we were wondering if it would be a SEO best practice for us to change our pages' extension from .aspx to .html and just put a re-direct from the aspx to the html pages. Or should we keep everything as is, and maybe just revise our on-page seo efforts as well as do some more link-building. I just have to note that we are currently ranking very well for top positions and obviously all these pages are already nicely indexed. And then another question I have is with regards to our mobi site of this same website.Our dev team created it using Responsive Web Design, but they decided to implement techniques that show and hide content based on what device you are viewing it on. So when viewing it on your desktop, it will show content as per normal, but when viewing it on a mobile device it will hide this content and show the content formatted for that specific mobile device. So we are obviously sitting with a case of dup content here.Is this technique acceptable, or is there a workaround/different way of implementing this? Thanks In Advance Dave
Web Design | | DavidZA10 -
How to serve a Mobile & Full Site using one URL?
Hello, Does anyone know of any resources or tutorials that outline how to serve a smartphone-formatted website using the same URL as the full site? I know that one solution is using media-queries to serve a seperate CSS stylesheet, but you still have the full HTML source code. In other words, I might want to serve a smartphone & desktop user different content, but under one URL. WP Touch (Wordpress Plugin) is a perfect example of what I mean, but how is it technically achieved? It serves two different sets of HTML for smartphone & full, but using one URL http://www.bravenewcode.com/store/plugins/wptouch-pro/
Web Design | | petecampbell-bmi0