Difference between revisions of "Learn/An-HTML-Sitemap-Helps-Search-Engines-Discover-You"

Revision as of 23:49, 22 July 2010

The purpose of a sitemap (aka site map) is to help search engine spiders and crawlers find and index all the pages on a website, and faster than they may otherwise.

Indexing is important because if a page on a website hasn't been indexed by a search engine, it cannot show up for any search query in that search engine.

A sitemap is particularly helpful to websites that have:

• several pages that aren't linked to from other prominent pages
• lots of pages
• pages that aren't showing up in search engines
• pages whose only inbound links are hidden from search engines because they're in something like Flash

Types of Sitemaps

The simplest kind is an HTML sitemap, that is just like another web page. You have probably seen these on some sites, as a "sitemap" link in the footer. An HTML sitemap is as simple to create as any other page on your website, so it doesn't require special tools or skills. Unlike the other types of sitemaps, it doesn't require additional steps like submitting it to search engines.

HTML sitemaps work well for smaller sites, with less than about 100 pages. If your site has more than 100 pages, if you don't want a "sitemap" link, or if you'd like to try something more complicated, consider these other sitemap options:

• An XML sitemap using the Sitemap Protocol
• A simple text file with one URL per line
• An RSS or Atom feed (typically for blogs)

For more information on these sitemap options click here. Note that with these options you will need to submit or specify the sitemap in order for it to do any good.

To the right is a video of Matt Cutts (of Google) discussing why HTML and XML sitemaps are both helpful.

How to Create an HTML Sitemap

You can likely use the same method to create your HTML sitemap as you would for any other page.

Here's an idea of what a simple sitemap's HTML code might look like:

<h1>Sitemap</h1>
<ul>
   <li><a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/">Home</a></li>
   <li><a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/products">Products</a></li>
   <li><a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/gizmos">Gizmos</a></li>
   <li><a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/gadets">Gadgets</a></li>
   <li><a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/about">About Us</a></li>
   <li><a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/contact">Contact</a></li>
   </ul>

If this isn't something that you can do one your own, there are sitemap generators that can do the work for you.

Once you've created your HTML sitemap you need to include a link to it on your website, preferably from part of your website's navigation -- like the footer -- or on your homepage.

Tips

• Unlike other types of sitemaps, an HTML sitemap is a link that some people may click and look at. Make it useful for them by grouping pages together logically, so that it can help some people find what they're looking for on your website.

Points of Order

• Sitemaps are purely supplementary. Web pages not listed in a sitemap can still be found and indexed other ways, such as through links.
• Creating and submitting a sitemap in no way guarantees that search engines will choose to index all the pages in it. A sitemap can help them find the pages, but they will only index it if they like the content they see.
• A sitemap does not help you rank better (higher) in search engines. It may help more web pages get indexed and show up in search results faster, which is still a good thing.

Additional Resources

• Sitemap FAQs from Google
• Wikipedia article about sitemaps
• "The Importance of HTML Sitemaps" from SearchEngineJournal.com