From increasing visibility for your pages to declaring the value and purpose of your website, here are 15 answers to the question, “Give specific reasons websites need an HTML sitemap?”


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  • Increase Traffic Volume and Time Spent on Pages
  • Facilitate Internationalization by Organizing Content
  • Boost SERP Rankings from Internal Links
  • Help Mobile Users Navigate With Ease
  • Maximize Your SERP Efforts
  • Improve Site Architecture
  • Make It Easy for Crawlers to Find Relevant Pages
  • Enhance Website Security
  • Allow for Multi-Language Versions
  • Aid in Indexing of All Pages
  • Encourage Website Maintenance
  • Raise Crawl Rates With an HTML Sitemap
  • Distribute Links Equally to All Internal Pages
  • Provide Touch Points Across the Site
  • Ease the Effects of Increased Content

Increase Traffic Volume and Time Spent on Pages

You may create a universe of page links by employing an HTML sitemap, which is one of the indisputable advantages. By gathering links on a map and organizing them by the website structure, an HTML sitemap aids in tying together online pages. Visitors can view more pages specified in the sitemap and click on desired links. The sitemap can help increase the traffic volume to your website and the time visitors spend on each page.

Oliver Andrews, Digital Marketing, OA Design Services

Facilitate Internationalization by Organizing Content

For a global website, I believe an HTML sitemap can help with internationalization. It can provide a clear and organized summary of the website’s content, making navigation easier for users regardless of language or cultural background. Website owners can use the sitemap to identify portions of their website that need to be translated into different languages, ensuring that their website is available to users all over the world.

Gerrid Smith, Chief Marketing Officer, Joy Organics

Boost SERP Rankings from Internal Links

HTML sitemaps are pretty basic—they don’t take a lot of time to set up and they pay dividends because of the boost in SERP rankings you get from all the internal links. HTML sitemaps make it a lot easier for Google to crawl your website, which makes it rank higher. There isn’t really any disadvantage to having one, besides making sure you maintain it well.

Dragos Badea, CEO, Yarooms

Help Mobile Users Navigate With Ease

UGC is trending, and HTML sitemaps can help users quickly find the content they are looking for, reducing frustration and improving the overall user experience. There are more mobile users than PC users, so optimizing for these types of users is important. HTML sitemaps can help mobile users navigate websites on smaller screens by providing an organized list of links that are easy to tap and explore.

Tristan Harris, Demand Generation Senior Marketing Manager, Thrive Agency

Maximize Your SERP Efforts

Adding an HTML sitemap is a pretty simple equation—a sitemap provides internal links, and those internal links make it easier for Google and other search engines to crawl the entirety of your site, which then makes you rank higher in the algorithm. It rarely takes that long to set up, so creating one and keeping it up to date is a simple decision if you’re looking to maximize your SEO efforts.

Kate Kandefer, CEO, SEOwind

Improve Site Architecture

An HTML sitemap can help you analyze the structure of your site and identify any areas that may need improvement. By analyzing the structure of your site, you can optimize your content to improve the overall experience and activity. 

Nick Edwards, Managing Director, Snowfinders

Make It Easy for Crawlers to Find Relevant Pages

An HTML sitemap provides an organized overview of the website’s content, making it easier for both users and search engine crawlers to find relevant pages on the website. It also helps ensure that search engines index all content. Having an up-to-date HTML sitemap can help improve a website’s visibility in organic search rankings.

Benjamin Okyere, Founder and CTO, Otto’s Journal

Enhance Website Security

If you want to strengthen the security of your website, an HTML sitemap can show you which parts are the weak points. The sitemap, for example, can discover obsolete software or plugins that need to be updated to ensure the website’s security. 

The sitemap can also identify portions of the website that are vulnerable to hacking efforts, such as login pages or contact forms, allowing website owners to adopt suitable security precautions.

Matt Magnante, Director of Content and SEO, Fitness Volt

Allow for Multi-Language Versions

Websites with multiple language versions can use HTML sitemaps to provide a clear overview of the content structure in each language. This can improve user experience and SEO by giving search engines a clear understanding of the content and structure of the website across languages.

Tim Parker, Director, Syntax Integration

Aid in Indexing of All Pages

HTML sitemaps can help search engine crawlers discover and index all the pages on a website. By providing a comprehensive list of pages, crawlers can more easily navigate through a website and find pages they might otherwise miss. It provides a clear and organized structure of the website’s content, making it easier for search engine crawlers to navigate and discover all the pages. 

By following links in the HTML sitemap, crawlers can easily access all pages on the site, even those that may be difficult to find through traditional navigation or internal linking. Search engine crawlers can more easily navigate through a website and find all the pages on it by providing a comprehensive list of pages. 

An HTML sitemap can help identify important pages and content, which may improve their visibility and ranking in search engine results. Overall, including an HTML sitemap on a website can be an effective strategy for improving search engine crawling and indexing.

Joe Hall, SEO Consultant, Hall Analysis

Encourage Website Maintenance

Keeping a website updated and running smoothly isn’t always easy or quick. I believe that an HTML sitemap can help website owners in maintaining their websites by offering a clear and concise overview of the website’s content. You can use it as a reference to check that all pages on the website are current and functional. This can also aid in the identification of broken links or sites that require updating or removal.

Gerrid Smith, Communications Manager, Texas Property Tax Loan Pros

Raise Crawl Rates With an HTML Sitemap

HTML sitemaps are primarily there to help users better navigate a website. The bigger the site, the more useful an HTML sitemap is for Google bot crawlers. Search engines use XML sitemaps to discover pages; however, there is one other main and arguably bigger method search engines use for discovery: internal links. 

That is where an HTML sitemap steps in. Some SEOs will argue they are vital, while others will say they are useless. The best answer? There is no harm in testing one out and seeing for yourself. From Google’s perspective, an HTML sitemap also acts as a navigational hub. 

It allows crawling bots to access multiple sections on your website quickly, which is useful when you have pages deep in a URL hierarchy. Without crawling, there is no indexing, and without indexing, there is no ranking. So, as an SEO, improving crawling processes is key! An HTML sitemap can help you achieve this.

Ben Poulton, SEO Consultant and Founder, Intellar

Distribute Links Equally to All Internal Pages

One key reason websites need an HTML sitemap is to boost link equity distribution to all internal pages. This is valuable when there has been no internal linking optimization. By providing a comprehensive map of your site, you help search engines effectively crawl and index your content, ultimately improving your site’s SEO performance.

Max Desiak, Co-founder and Marketing Strategist, Spreadsheet Daddy

Provide Touch Points Across the Site

Although considered quite a legacy practice, I fully believe HTML sitemaps form a solid function in even most modern SEO campaigns. They provide touch points across the site for search engines to discover and index pages more efficiently, contributing to better visibility and ranking in search results. HTML sitemaps can improve the internal linking structure of a website, helping distribute link equity among various pages, which can positively affect a site’s overall SEO performance.

For me, I think HTML sitemaps can be useful for websites that have many pages or complex structures, as they make it easier for search engine crawlers to discover and index those pages. This can lead to more comprehensive indexing, which ultimately results in better visibility in search results.

Harry Boxhall, Freelance SEO Consultant, Boxhall Marketing

Ease the Effects of Increased Content

The quantity of content on websites increases along with their size. The organization of your website could deteriorate because of this process, making it harder for users to understand what it offers. By arranging important pages and ensuring that your visitors need only a few clear steps to convert, a well-organized sitemap can help ease this. 

The description of your website’s goal is one of the most important reasons it needs a sitemap. If visitors have trouble understanding a website’s precise aim and services, they may leave without making a purchase. An organized sitemap acts as a concise declaration of the value and purpose of your website.

Jay Soni, Marketing Director, Yorkshire Fabric Shop