Learn/An-HTML-Sitemap-Helps-Search-Engines-Discover-You

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Creating a simple HTML sitemap          RetweetIconSmall.png FacebookShareIcon2.png    GoogleBuzzIcon.png
By Kristina Weis
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A sitemap - also written as "site map" - helps search engine spiders and crawlers find and index all the pages on a website more quickly than they might be able to do 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:

  • 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 to from pages that search engines can't easily read or follow links on because they are rendered in Flash or another technology that effectively hides information from search engines

Types of Sitemaps

A simple HTML sitemap is just like any other web page. You have probably seen links to this type of sitemap at the bottom of the page on many websites, sometimes indicated as "Site Map" or "Site Index."

An HTML sitemap is a list of links to all the pages on your website that you want indexed. It is as simple to create as any other page on your website, so it doesn't require special tools or skills. Unlike other types of sitemaps, it doesn't require the additional step of submitting it to search engines.

HTML sitemaps work well for sites that have fewer than 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:

Read more about these sitemap options in our article on complex sitemaps. Note that if you use any of these options, you will need to submit your sitemap to search engines if you want them to use the sitemap and index your pages.

Matt Cutts, who heads the webspam team at Google, discusses the importance of HTML and XML sitemaps in the video at the right. He advises that an HTML sitemap is best in most cases because it's the most helpful sitemap for both search engines 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


See more articles like this one.

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