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
-
Sitemaps: Good Image And Video Sitemap Generators
Hello, We are trying to update our sitemap. We have currently updated our XML and HTML sitemaps but would like to have an image and video sitemap also. Can anyone recommend a good image and video sitemap generator? Kind regards, | Deeana Radley Web Designer & SEO Assistant Phone: 01702 460047 Email: dee@solopress.com Google+: +DeeanaRadley Twitter: @DeeanaRadley |
Technical SEO | | SolopressPrint0 -
Two Sites - One Domain
I just want to be sure, but if I install a Wordpress blog in a subfolder of a HTML site, Google will see that as one site, not two different sites, correct? Even if there is two index files?
Technical SEO | | jshiraz0 -
Two sites
Hi there just joined had nightmere of a time trying to get a website up and running..... now i have 2 .... one marketing person did and one i did the one i did performing better on google but other onre looks more profetional is there a way i can conbine the 2 under one site..... the one that looks better and getting the benifit of the one thats performing better...... Thanks steve......
Technical SEO | | stevetemple0 -
SEO value of an on-site hosted blog
We are in the process of upgrading our blogging capability. Our preference would be to host a Wordpress blog under our site url. However due to our technical set up we've found out that it isn't possible to put Wordpress onto our servers so we'll need to go with a hosted version. Does anyone have any idea or examples of how this could affect our SEO performance? Also - is Wordpress the best tool - seems to be the most popular! Thanks. Jon
Technical SEO | | TTS_Group0 -
Redirect from old wordpress site to new php site? Best approach
Hi I have two websites one legacy site done in wordpress the other in php. However I would like to merge the two together and remove the wordpress site. However it has a good link profile and the pages rank well. What is the best approach to do a 301 redirect from the old site with all its pages pointing to the homepage of the new site? If so what's the best way to do this in wordpress? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Value Of You Tube Videos Embedded on Site
I have seen this response http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/36353/video-sitemaps-for-youtube-embedded-videos That basically answers this question by saying that Google will give value to the site embedding the video. However I have seen much talk about this whether this really ads any value to the actual site. So By searching videos on Google my site will NOT come up in the results for any embedded video. What would the actual value be?
Technical SEO | | zachc_coffeeforless.com0 -
Site Structure question
when deciding the Site structure for a e-commerce site Is it better to keep everything mysite.com/widget.html or use categories like mysite.com/Gifts/widget.html
Technical SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
301 redirect on the root of the site
Due to some historic difficulties with our URL Rewriter, we are in the position of having the root of our site 301 redirected to another page. So the root of our site: http://www.propertylive.co.uk/ has a 301 redirect to: http://www.propertylive.co.uk/home.aspx We're aware that this isn't great and we're working to fix this completely, but what impact will this have on our SEO?
Technical SEO | | LianWard860