Hi Moz peeps, google said that we should have two site maps...

[david305]

Hi Moz peeps, google said that we should have two site maps...

one for google and one for people. Now i know having a site map to submit to google for the first time is important for SEO, but is having a site map for people visitng the site help at all in terms of google's bots crawling your site?

I know it might actually help human people navigate through your site, I just want to know if by not having it or having it affects on page SEO at all,

thanks guys

[RobertFisher]

David

I think what you are referring to is HTML sitemaps vs XML Sitemaps and the inclusion of both. Google prefers XML and people use HTML : From GWMT -

Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML Sitemap—usually called Sitemap, with a capital S—is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, Including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process.

I agree with the others, that an HTML sitemap can be helpful to visitors. For indexing, we use XML.

Best

[mediabase]

Hi David, For SEO to be effective it is important that the search engine spiders and web crawlers can properly index a site. Based on your site's architecture and its links (both external and internal) the engines can establish and weight the profile of how each interacts to map out which pages have the highest significance to their index.

One of the most effective ways of encouraging full and extensive visiting and indexing of your site by the spiders is to integrate a site map (or maps) into your development. Sitemaps are an easy way for web masters to represent the structure of a site and inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. Human visitors also appreciate site maps as navigation.

An HTML sitemap is an actual page on a site containing links to the website's most important pages. Any site with anything approaching complex navigation should consider an HTML sitemap for visitors. Whilst an HTML sitemap can be read and the links followed by spiders (so some passing of link juice is involved that might affect SEO), it also has the advantage of being readable by humans as well.

A visitor might refer to an HTML site map to help them navigate when they can't find a specific page easily. This visitor readability and usability issue that allows users to locate pages within a large site will give weight to your site in the SERP's, (search engine ranking pages) as they will weight your pages favourably for catering to your users and being user-friendly.

HTML sitemaps, however offer only a general guide to a site, an overview, not necessarily containing all the links available to spider in a website. This is especially the case for websites that contain dynamically generated pages (shopping carts, etc).

editor's note: for complete post, see http://www.seoconsult.com/on-page-search-engine-optimisation/what-effect-do-xml-and-html-sitemaps-have-in-relation-to-seo.html

I hope that you r query has been solved.

[BryanCasson]

Hi David,

If you have a good structure on your website then there is no need for a HTML sitemap. By good structure I mean, is every important page on your site easily accessible within 2 clicks from any other page on your website? Are your menu's SEO friendly? Are your main products/services highlighted on your home page in summary? I do not use an HTML sitemap on any of my sites, I just make sure that Google can access every page that is important to me no matter where they land on my site.

[Netlogiq]

Hello,

A site map for people will not only help visitors find your content easier but it will also help at SEO, because it improves the way your data is linked internally - increasing the number of internal inbound links.