Think it's no longer necessary to have an HTML sitemap? It's wrong. Here are seven reasons for adding (or keeping) an HTML sitemap.
What Are XML Sitemaps?
XML site maps help search engines and spiders locate pages on your website. Such site maps provide web-based search engines with URLs and provide a full map of all pages on the internet. This helps search engines prioritise the pages they’re going to crawl.
There is information in the sitemap that indicates the frequency of page changes on one URL versus the other on that domain, but this is unlikely to have any effect on rankings.
An XML sitemap is very useful for large websites that might otherwise take a long time for a spider to crawl through the file. Every site has a particular amount of crawl budget allocated to its domain, and no search engine can automatically crawl any URL the first time it encounters it.
An XML sitemap is a good way for a search engine to create a list of pages it needs to support.
What Are HTML Sitemaps?
HTML sitemaps tend to support website users. Sitemaps show any page on the web – from main pages to lower-level pages. The HTML sitemap is just a clickable list of pages on the web. At its rawest form, it may be an unordered list of every article on a web – but don’t do that.
It is a perfect chance to build some sort of order out of chaos, and it’s worth making an effort.
Why You Should Leverage HTML Sitemaps
1. Organise Large Websites
Your website is going to increase in size. You may add an e-commerce shop to a variety of departments or you can extend your product range. Or, more likely, the platform is just growing as more employees are introduced to the business.
However, this may lead to uncertainty for tourists who are unsure about where to go or what you have to offer. The HTML sitemap operates in the same way as a department store or shopping mall map.
The sitemap is a perfect way for a sitemap maintainer to take stock of each page to make sure he has his rightful home somewhere on the internet.
This is a directory for users who can’t locate the pages they’re searching for somewhere else on the internet so, as a last resort, it will help them get there.
2. Serves as an Architecture
Think of the HTML sitemap as an architectural model for your web. The sitemap will become a project management tool. This manages the layout and links between pages and subpages. Think you need to get better results with your Google Ads?
Your campaign can suffer from click fraud. Test to see if you need to defend your ads from rivals & bots. Simple setup. Get a free check-up today. It’s also a pushing feature to make sure you have a clear hierarchy and taxonomy for the web. A healthy sitemap is like a well-organised regular schedule.
Like every busy person knows, there’s a huge difference between an agenda that pops up every meeting at random versus those that are planned and scheduled around blocks of time. In this case, the agenda is still an agenda, but the coordinated agenda is much more beneficial to all.
3. Highlights the Website Purpose
As a content-based document, the HTML sitemap serves as a way to better identify the basic meaning of your website. Enhance this benefit by using SEO to identify the most unique and relevant keywords to be included in the sitemap. Anchor text is a perfect way to establish keyword value for a website and for pages without many cross-links, a sitemap is a convenient way to use anchor text. To understand the power of anchor text on its own, look at the search results for the “click here” query.
4. Speed the Work of Search Engine Crawlers
You want to help the search engines out in whatever way you can and take over where you can. The assistance involves locating the material and putting it up in the queue of the crawl.
While the XML sitemap is just a laundry list of links, HTML links are actually the way the web browsers want to access the web. The HTML sitemap helps to attract attention to this content by placing the spotlight on the most appropriate pages on the website. You can also upload a text version of your sitemap to Google.
5. Increase Search Engine Visibility
Like certain websites, Google and other search engines may not be in the process of indexing every web page. For example, if you have a link on one of your websites, search bots may want to follow that link.
Bots are trying to verify that the link makes sense. But, in doing so, the bots can never return to continue indexing the remaining pages. The HTML sitemap will guide these bots to get a full picture of your site and to find all sites. In addition, this will make it easier for the bots to do their job and they will stay longer to follow the navigation page set out for them.
Not only is taxonomy and hierarchy helping users to find themselves, but it is also extremely necessary for crawlers to search. The sitemap will help crawlers understand the taxonomy of the website. There is no limit on how large a sitemap can be, and LinkedIn also has a sitemap that has links to all of its millions of user sites.
6. Enable Links to Drive Visitors
Not every page is connected via a link in the header or footer. The HTML sitemap will step in to find the perfect connexions that answer how visitors will search for items. In this way, the HTML sitemap will represent a visitor’s journey and direct them from research to acquisition. By doing so, this benefit of HTML site maps can increase the visibility of these linked pages for organic searches.
In this scenario, the sitemap is a fallback that guarantees that there is never a page on a site that is orphaned. I’ve seen big gains in the traffic of sites that had problems with deeper pages and didn’t get a lot of internal links.
7. Identify Where Site Navigation Could Improve
As the website expands as you create more content, there may be redundant data that may be troublesome for a search engine. Nevertheless, after mapping it out, you’ll be able to use the sitemap to identify and delete the duplication.
For example, this only works if there is a sitemap owner looking at the sitemap on a semi-regular basis. Even, if you use analytics or thermal map software, you can infer that more visitors use the HTML sitemap than the navigation.
It is a clear indication that you need to reassess why this is happening if the current navigation is missing. It is necessary to decide whether you can adjust the layout of the site and make it easier for tourists and find what they need.
You’ll want to build an HTML sitemap for all of these advantages. Such services save money (time and resources). We also have an easy way to direct the website users to what they need and help them close their purchases.
Getting Started
If you don’t have an HTML sitemap but use a WordPress website, I suggest one of the several sitemap plug-ins. Plug-ins automate a significant part of the sitemap production and management process.
For larger sites, it could take a web crawl like:
- Screaming Frog or SiteBulb on your screen
- OnCrawl or DeepCrawl in the cloud
The output of this web crawl will then serve as the basis for organising all the theme pages of the site. Since creating an HTML sitemap, don’t forget to put a link on your website that’s easy to find. You can either position a connexion at the top, as part of a sidebar, or in a footer menu that continues to be available as visitors pass from page to page.
But if you look at it, an HTML sitemap is a simple way to get big benefits without a lot of work.