Learn/An-HTML-Sitemap-Helps-Search-Engines-Discover-You
Revision as of 17:03, 26 July 2010 by Aliza Earnshaw (talk | contribs) (Roll to)
The purpose of a sitemap -- also written as "site map' -- is to help search engine spiders and crawlers find and index all the pages on a website, and faster than they might be able to do without a sitemap.
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:
- Pages that aren't linked from more prominent pages on the site
- Lots of pages
- Pages that aren't showing up in search engines -- but you want them to
- Pages linked from pages that search engines can't index because they are rendered in Flash or another technology that effectively hides information from search engines
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. He suggests that if you could only do one type, to do an HTML sitemap because it's helpful for search engine spiders and people.
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. Without this step, it won't provide any benefit.
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 in logical categories, 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. Nevertheless, a sitemap is a good tool for increasing the likelihood that pages will be indexed.
- Creating and submitting a sitemap does not guarantee that search engines will choose to index all the pages in it. A sitemap can help them find the pages, but engines will index pages only if their algorithms determine the content is valuable for searchers.
- A sitemap does not help you rank higher in search engine results. But it may help you get more pages on your site indexed and showing up faster in search results. For a new site, or one that doesn't yet have a lot of links pointing to it, that's a big benefit.
Additional Resources
- Sitemap FAQs from Google
- Wikipedia article about sitemaps
- "The Importance of HTML Sitemaps" from SearchEngineJournal.com
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