HTML sitemaps are an important tool for users and search engine crawlers alike, and they come under the technical SEO quadrant of search engine optimization. Webmasters can direct people to the most important information on their site or tell crawlers which pages are most significant by providing a list of the top site pages.
Determining the value of SEO efforts and their overall effectiveness requires combining the level of optimization and usability of an HTML sitemap.
Why do I need an HTML sitemap and what does it mean?
Fundamentally, HTML sitemaps serve as a navigational aid for people and site spiders alike. Usually, they are linked from the footer of every page on the website and reside in a top-level subdirectory under the domain (e.g., example.com/sitemap). This offers a unique advantage in that it ensures that customers who become lost while browsing material can always access the HTML sitemap with just one click.
Knowing that a sitemap is a component of your indexing strategy will make it easiest for you to comprehend what it is. What is meant by that? In short, a sitemap instructs search engine crawlers on which URLs to visit first and how frequently.
Note: The intended use of HTML sitemaps differs from that of XML sitemaps in their purpose. Search engines may readily crawl XML sitemaps, a unique file format ending in.xml, to locate content on websites without having to download whole pages or follow internal connections. Searching for a generator of sitemaps? Most content management systems, such as WordPress websites, have a plugin that allows you to browse your sitemap.
What needs to be a part of an HTML sitemap?
Even though HTML sitemaps are straightforward in their execution and goal, there are a few essential components that must be present for maximum benefit:
Organization and Structure
The arrangement and structure of links is the most important component of HTML sitemaps. Users will be able to follow a content path to specific pages and crawl bots will be able to discern the connections between various pages if you establish an easily navigable hierarchy. This will improve the visibility of your site’s structure.
All of the pages you want Google, Yahoo, and Bing to crawl and rank should be included in a sitemap. A sitemap consists of two primary components.
- Page priority: There is a.01-1.0 scale for page priority. Your primary service and product pages will be 0.9 and your homepage will always be 1.0.
- Modify frequency: This instructs search engine crawlers on how frequently to visit a page. The daily, weekly, and monthly change frequencies are among them.
- Note: Your Robots.txt file should be mirrored by a sitemap. Search engines are informed which URLs NOT to crawl by the Robots file. This implies that pages that are blocked in your Robots file shouldn’t be included in your sitemap, and vice versa.
Enhanced Anchor Text
When building an HTML sitemap, including pertinent, keyword-rich anchor text is essential. It will therefore receive a boost in authority from the homepage’s PageRank. The link quality score of the sites to which links are made from the HTML sitemap will be raised if the anchor text used is optimized.
Video Sitemap
Using a video sitemap will notify search engines about new and updated video material on a website that hosts videos.
Restrict Links
A sitemap in HTML format shouldn’t include more than 100 links. It is advised to establish many theme-based sitemaps for larger websites.
A static webpage
Rather than being an image or flash file, an HTML sitemap should be a fixed page. By doing this, search engines will be able to read the sitemap correctly.
The Yoast plugin is one of several WordPress plugins available. Using the Google search console, the Yoast plugin automatically generates several sitemaps that you may submit to Google (formerly known as webmaster tools).
To determine whether your sitemap has any mistakes, it’s crucial to submit it to Google via the search console.
Does an automated HTML sitemap make sense?
An automatic HTML sitemap is helpful for e-commerce sites that have several brands or often change their product offerings. The quantity of broken links and human updates will be decreased by automatically updating links. For instance, there is a “view all brands” option on the Zoompos sitemap.
An automated sitemap makes it simple to update the many brands that are displayed, which enhances both user experience and “crawl-ability” for search engines.
Google Condenses It
In addition to being a search engine optimization recommended practice, a well-optimized HTML sitemap directly improves organic results, according to Matt Cutts, the current head of the US Digital Service (USDS). Is that all the convincing it takes for you?