7 reasons HTML sitemaps are still essential

The debate about the utility of HTML sitemaps and its effectiveness in SEO continues.

But as far as I am concerned, they are useful to users, and there is no good reason not to use them. If there is additional SEO value, so much the better.

The site map guides your website visitors to where they want to go. If they don’t find what they are looking for in your drop-down menu or on-site search, they will turn here.

In addition to helping your visitors navigate your website (which should be the main focus of any marketing effort), there are many other important reasons for using sitemaps. We will explore these below.

First of all, it is important to understand that the website uses two types of sitemaps:

• XML site map.
• HTML site map.

What is an XML sitemap?

XML sitemap Help search engines and spiders find pages on your website.

These site maps provide the URL of a website for search engines and provide a complete map of all pages on the site for data. This helps search engines prioritize which pages to crawl.

The information in the sitemap shows the frequency of page changes between one URL and other URLs on the site, but this is unlikely to have any impact on rankings.

XML sitemaps are very useful for large websites, otherwise it may take a long time for spiders to crawl on the website, and can help search engines simply know which pages exist. Without this sitemap, they will not be able to build a complete menu of available pages until they finish crawling the entire site.

Each site has a specific number of Crawl budget Assigned to their website, so no search engine will simply crawl each URL the first time it encounters it.

XML sitemaps are a great way for search engines to build the queue of pages they want to provide.

What is an HTML sitemap?

HTML sitemaps ostensibly serve website visitors. The site map includes every page on the website-from the main page to the lower-level pages, and can be considered a well-organized directory.

An HTML sitemap is just a list of clickable pages on a website. In its most primitive form, it can be an unordered list of every page on the site-but don’t do that.

This is a good opportunity to create order from chaos, so it is worth the effort.

Why you should use HTML sitemaps

Although you may already be using XML sitemaps-some people insist that HTML sitemaps are no longer needed-here are seven reasons to add (or keep) updated HTML sitemaps.

1. Organize large websites

Your website will get bigger and bigger.

You can add an e-commerce store with multiple departments, or you can expand your product portfolio. Or, more likely, the website will only grow as new ideas become part of the company.

However, this can be confusing for visitors who are confused about where to go or what you have to provide.

An HTML site map works like a department store or shopping mall map.

A site map is a great way for the person maintaining the site map to evaluate each page and ensure that it has a legal location in a certain location on the site.

This is a directory where users cannot find the page they are looking for elsewhere on the site. As a last resort, this should help them get there. When I was confused about where I was on the website, I found myself looking for a site map.

2. Serving as project manager and architect

Think of the HTML sitemap as the architectural blueprint of your website.

The site map becomes a project management tool. It supervises the structure and connections between pages and subpages.

This is also a mandatory feature to ensure that you have a Clear hierarchy and classification For the website. Every page created must find a home.

A good site map is like a well-organized schedule.

Anyone who is busy knows that there is a big difference between randomly arranging the agenda for each meeting and organizing the agenda around the time period.

In either case, the agenda is still an agenda, but an organized agenda is more useful for everyone.

3. Highlight the purpose of the website

As a content-based document, an HTML sitemap can be used as a way to further define the specific value of your website.

This advantage is enhanced by using SEO to determine the most unique and relevant keywords to be included in the sitemap.

Anchor text is a great way to create keyword relevance for pages and pages that don’t have many cross-links. Sitemaps are a simple alternative to using anchor text. Although there is no guarantee that anchor text will be valued by search engines, it does not hurt to give it a try.

4. Speed ​​up the work of search engine crawlers

You want to help these search engines in any way, and control as much as possible. Help includes finding your content and moving it up in the crawl queue.

Although the XML sitemap is just a list of links, HTML links are actually the way search crawlers prefer to discover the web.

HTML sitemaps help draw attention to the content by focusing on the most important pages of your website.You can also submit the text version of the sitemap to Google.

5. Increase the visibility of search engines

For some websites, Google and other search engines may not complete the indexing of every page.

For example, if you have a link on one of the pages, search robots may choose to follow that link.

The bot wants to verify that the link makes sense. However, in doing so, the robot may never return to continue indexing the remaining pages.

HTML sitemaps can guide these robots to obtain a complete picture of your site and consider all pages. In turn, this can facilitate the work of robots, and they may stay longer to follow the page navigation laid out for them.

Taxonomy and hierarchy not only help users find themselves, but they are also very important for search crawlers. The site map can help crawlers understand the classification of the website.

There is no limit to the size of the sitemap, LinkedIn even has a Site map Link to all millions of user pages.

6. Enable page links in a natural way to attract visitors

Not every page will be connected via a link located in the header or footer.

HTML site maps can step in and find these ideal connections to solve the problem of how visitors find things.

In this way, the HTML site map can reflect the visitor’s journey and guide them from research to purchase. In doing so, this advantage of HTML sitemaps can increase the natural search visibility of these linked pages.

In this case, the sitemap is a fallback to ensure that there will never be a page on the site orphan.

I have seen a huge increase in website traffic, and these websites have the problem of not receiving many internal links on deeper pages.

Image: Eli Schwartz, November 2021

7. Identify the areas where website navigation can be improved

Once your website grows and develops more pages, it may appear Duplicate data, This may be problematic for search engines.

But after all the content is mapped, you will be able to use the sitemap to find duplicates and delete them.

By the way, this only works if the owner of the sitemap checks the sitemap semi-regularly.

In addition, when you apply analytics or heat map tools, you may come to the conclusion that more visitors use HTML sitemaps than navigation.

This is a clear signal, if the current navigation does not find the marker, you need to re-evaluate why this happened.

It is important to determine how to change the site architecture to make it easier for visitors to find what they need.

For all these benefits, you need to maintain an HTML site map. These benefits save resources (time and money).

They also provide an effective way to guide your website visitors to find what they need and help complete these sales.

getting Started

If you don’t have an HTML sitemap but do use a platform like WordPress, I recommend one of them Sitemap pluginThe plug-in automates most of the site map development and management process.

For larger websites, you may need to run a web crawler, such as:

• Screaming Frog or SiteBulb on the desktop.
• OnCrawl or DeepCrawl in the cloud.

The output of this web crawl should then be used as the basis for organizing all the pages of the site around the theme.

After developing an HTML sitemap, don’t forget to put an easy-to-find link on your website.

You can place the link at the top, as part of the sidebar, or in the footer menu, which continues to be available as visitors move from page to page.

No matter how you look at it, HTML sitemaps are a simple way to get huge benefits without too much effort.

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Featured image: Shutterstock/Griboedov