The Benefits of HTML Sitemaps
As previous SEO Manual entries have shown, sitemaps are a great way to get your website indexed; along with helping Google Bots and Humans to view all of the web pages available. This entry will go into detail of the benefits of having a HTML sitemap on a website.
Unnecessary Page Views
Firstly, when anybody visits a website they will more often than not land on the homepage; this is how websites are designed and how it should be. Yet, visitors land on the homepage more often than not already knowing what they are looking for. Homepages are a great way to give an introduction and overview to a website, but for someone who already knows what they looking for it’s just another web page that has to be viewed before finding what they are after.
Once a user has landed on the homepage and they need to find something specific they will usually look at the navigation menu first. This can also add another set of web pages for the user to look at before finding exactly what they want, this is where a HTML sitemap is key. If a HTML sitemap link is included at the bottom of every web page within a website, a visitors first button click can direct them to the sitemap where a list of every web page is. This enables the user to scan through the list of links and find exactly what they are looking for without the need to visit other web pages that may make the user undesirably click away to another website.
How Complicated?
As HTML sitemaps go, they are pretty basic. A web page with a list of links to each web page within a website. The benefits you gain are well worth the time it takes to make one. HTML sitemaps are often kept within the same colour scheme and style as the rest of the website.
An example of a HTML sitemap is: http://www.positiongoldltd.com/site-map/
Not only do HTML sitemaps provide humans the visual aid they may need to find information, but search engines give credit to websites which have internal linking. Providing a page with a list of links which all internally link may prompt the search engines to give you credit for it by adjusting your pagerank etc.
Summary
To summarise, the time taken to create a HTML sitemap is well worth it when placed against the amount of visitors can be kept and the additional credit the website may gain from search engines.
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