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
-
Working around Dev Site
I am working around development site. All pages are 'nofollow'. What can I advice on, when it come to SEO and is there any good article or checklist that I can go through. One thing I wanted to know is how can I check for broken links or meta data or any other SEO analytics if the page is 'nofollow' and I cannot crawl it with screaming frog or any other tools.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atlanticocean0 -
Why is my site not getting crawled by google?
Hi Moz Community, I have an escort directory website that is built out of ajax. We basically followed all the recommendations like implementing the escaped fragment code so Google would be able to see the content. Problem is whenever I submit my sitemap on Google webmastertool it always 700 had been submitted and only 12 static pages had been indexed. I did the site query and only a number of pages where indexed. Does it have anything to do with my site being on HTTPS and not on HTTP? My site is under HTTPS and all my content is ajax based. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | en-gageinc0 -
Site Transfer and Downtime
If I want to transfer my website from yahoo to another web host without having any down time how would I do that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Understanding the levels in my site
How can I figure out which pages are on the same level on my site ? I created an automatic sitemap with a software online but it doesn't tell me abc page is on the 1 st level, xyz page is on the second level etc... and I have a hard time figuring out if my main menu is on the same level as my drop down menu as it is visible on the same page. Is there anyway to figure what which pages are on the same level ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Changing a url from .html to .com
Hello, I have a client that has a site with a .html plugin and I have read that its best to not have this. We currently have pages ranking with this .html plug in. However If we take the plug in out will we lose rankings? would we need a 301 or something?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Site #2 beats site #1 in every aspect?
Hey guys, loving SEOMoz so far and will definitely continue my subscription after the free trial. I have a question however, which I am really confused about. When researching my primary keyword, I have found that the second ranked site beats the top site in every single aspect, apart from domain age, which is almost 6 years for the top one and 6 months for the second. When I say every single aspect, I mean everything. More authority for the page and domain, more links, more anchor text links, more authoritive links, more social signals, more relevant links, better domain (although second ranked site is a .net), better MozRank, better MozTrust etc.... I have noticed though, that in the UK SERPs, those sites are switched, so #2 is actually #1. Could it be that the US SERPs just haven't updated yet, or am I missing something completely different.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | darrenspeed1 -
Multiple sitemaps for one site?
Excuse my sitemap ignorance here. I've got a site and it's got a blog in a sub-folder. The blog gets updated frequently, the main site does not. Is it best to; a) Have 2 sitemaps.. one in the root and one in the /blog folder. b) Have 1 sitemap that is regularly updated The reason being, I know there's various plugins that create blog sitemaps on the fly, so that would be much easier than updating the main sitemap every time a change was made. If the answer is 2 sitemaps; Would you stop the root sitemap from detailing the contents of the blog folder or just update it every so often with the contents of the blog folder?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterAlexLeigh0 -
How Does This Site Rank So Well?!
So this website -> http://bailbondsripoffreport.com/ Ranks on the First Page for the term "Bail Bonds" It's the spammiest crappiest piece of junk website ever! lol - How does this site rank so well, it's not even a year old and it's link structure is crap. Can I like report them and have them removed lol. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | utahseopros0