Master Digital Marketing, WordPress, SEO
Unlock your potential with expert tips and in-depth guides. Stay ahead with the latest strategies in digital marketing, WordPress optimization, SEO.
Best practices, and essential tools to grow your online presence. Learn, apply, and thrive!
In this guide, you will learn what HTML sitemaps are and how to use them to boost your site’s SEO.
Ready to learn and improve your site in a quick and easy way?
Yes?
Let’s go!
There are quite a few more but I feel these 3 best illustrate how important HTML sitemap can be to your blog.
Each site on the web that Google knows about has its monthly crawl budget dedicated to it.
Basically, that’s how often Google is willing to crawl that site in one month’s time.
Now it’s possible to increase crawl budget (by increasing link authority) but it’s best to optimize the way Google crawls your site.
And HTML sitemaps help a tonne here.
Why?
Because Google-bot follows links and your sitemap is going to be a BIG list of links, all going places.
Also, this ensures you won’t be having orphaned pages anywhere on your site.
While XML sitemaps are just for robots, their HTML brethren are safe for human consumption too:)
So folks who want to quickly find something and you don’t have search function enabled on your blog.
Can simply pop on over to your sitemap and search for what they need.
As I explained in this post on Vishwajeet Kumar’s blog, when you’re a very small site with not a lot of links pointing to you.
It’s crucial to use what little equity you have with the greatest efficiency.
And then it’s even more crucial to make sales with what traffic you do get (here are some tips to boost your affiliate income)
HTML sitemaps are a true boon there as PR flows through those links baby!
Here’s an old but still relevant video from Matt Cutts that confirms it.
There are ways to ensure that maximum Page Rank flows to your most important pages.
Here’s how:
Have Your Sitemap in Your Menu
Why?
Because your menu is ever-present throughout your site. Everything links to it and if, for example, you have 400 posts indexed in Google, then that’s at least 400 internal links pointing to that page.
This makes it very authoritative and your sitemap is then able to strategically pass on PR elsewhere.
Think of your sitemap as a pool of water and links on that page are pipes. And your pages are dying of thirst. 🙂
Link to Your Categories And Your MOST Important Posts
Why?
Because I say so! Just DO IT!
Kidding:)
Link to categories so that PR flows through them and to the rest of your site.
Link to your most important pages because that way you send a tonne of juice directly to your money page.
For example on my site, my Wealthy Affiliate Review is my money page.
And that guide has found its place in my sitemap, and with keyword-rich anchor too.
First, there is the manual way. Simply create a new page in WP and add in your most important links.
That is how I did it on my site.
Second way is with a plugin and here are the steps.
Go and install a Simple Sitemap plugin.
Then in your WP dashboard on the left find the Sitemap tab and click on “Simple Sitemap.”
Then click on the “available shortcodes” tab and choose one of the shortcodes that’s available for free.
Then just paste the shortcode in the editor and publish your brand new HTML sitemap.
Question Cage
This is how Navin set up his.
At the top of the page, he has jump links that pull you further down the page when you click on them.
And his posts are listed under their respective categories giving a nice overview of what QuestionCage is all about.
I like it.
This sitemap is very effective at passing PR because ever post gets a direct link from it. But the downside to that is that since there are so many links PR is pretty diluted.
But that’s ok as Navin has obviously created his Sitemap with a human-first mindset.
Crazy Egg
And here’s an example of an HTML sitemap that’s built with robots in mind, at least that’s how it seems to me.
You can see that this sitemap consists of category links and shortlists of important links beneath each category.
This is ideal for SEO and I won’t say anything more.
Note: Crazy Egg keeps their sitemap in footer. If they moved it to the menu, even partially hidden, it would probably give them a larger SEO boost.
That is because menu links are above the fold and inherently more valuable than footer links which are always hidden and out of sight.
HTML sitemaps are in many ways a rarity in SEO. It’s because when you create them intending to boost your SEO, you’re boosting your UX as well.
Because where bots go, people follow or is it the other way around?
With HTML sitemaps- it doesn’t matter.
It’s all good!
I want to thank Navin for letting me share my expertise, and YOU, leave me a comment below, lemme know what you think.
thanks:)
Guest Author: Nikola Roza is an SEO nerd. But never mind that. He can help you get more free search engine traffic. And then convert that traffic into affiliate sales. For more info- visit nikolaroza.com
Hi Nikola,
I am new reader of your blog. I love to read new blog post every day. And, I found your post today. It is really great SEO tips. Also you covered internal links that is much important for SEO. nice article.
Sitemap defines the way Search Engines like Google react with a blog, it’s best to optimise sitemap in order to get the best.
Thanks for sharing this amazing post with us! More value obtained.
Hey Nikola,
I am a new blogger, I had submitted xml sitemap for my wp-site. But you helped me to understand how HTML sitemap can help web crawler to index easily, Also improve SEO ranking. Now, I will surly submit HTML sitemap in my wpblog.
Thanks for sharing specific sitemap information.
Hi Nand,
glad you liked my guide.
Create a simple HTML sitemap, put it in the footer and you’re golden.
It’s an easy way for Google to find and index your content, fast!
Thanks for commenting!
Hey Navin & Nikola,
Nice insights. Thanks for sharing this . Till now I was relying on submitting the sitemap from rankmath. But I will surely try this plugin and share my observation with you guys. I have a small question though for Nikola. I submit sitemap after publishing a new post on my site . Do I need to do anything else ?
Hi Chayan,
no you don’t need to do anything else.
Submit an XML sitemap whenever you publish something new and don’t worry about it all.
Yes, HTML sitemap will help the users to find the all content of our blog at one place. user can easily consume our content.
first I come to know about HTML sitemap from Sumit Bansal ( craftofblogging).
I also created HTML sitemap on my venkatranda blog. have to include in also bloggingray.
your post help a lot.
thank you for this post. keep come up with this awesome stuff.
Thanks Venkat
HTML sitemaps are an easy SEO hack but are also good for users.
For a perfect example of what I mean, take a look what Navin does with his sitemap.
https://questioncage.com/sitemap/
Hey Nikola
This is a unique and useful post.
And Navin, I have checked your blog snapshot, it’s really good.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Amit,
I tried my best to write a good post.
And yes, Navin’s sitemap is excellent, and somewhat unique too. I’ve never seen before that you have jump links at the start that pull you deeper into the page.
That’s great UX!
Hi Nikola, this is a very nice article but I use a blogger site, so how will I get to do it on my site?
Thank you.
Hi George!
You don’t need a plugin to create a sitemap. Simply create a new page, post your important links there, and place the page in the menu.
That will work just fine.
hello Nikola, Thanks for this nice helpful article. I have a question. you have asked to keep Sitemap in the menu. is it ok if I keep Sitemap in the footer menu. thanks in advance.
Hi Saikat,
yeah it’s perfectly fine to keep it in the footer. Menu in my opinion is slightly better because Google treats your menu as highly valuable, and all pages there are highly valuable in turn; and all links on those pages are also highly valuable.
But footer is also an important part of the site, so go for it. You will still get the SEO benefit that comes with HTML sitemaps.
Thanks for your quetion, Saikat!
Hey Nikola, i found this article very helpfull ..thanks for such amazing article..
Hi Amir, glad that it has helped you!
Are you going to start using HTML maps for SEO?