Are Sitemaps Really Necessary
by Warren
(NY)
In this post, I just wanted to briefly examine why some do provide sitemaps for their human visitors.
Navigation
Yes we have menus and links to help navigate our websites. However, sitemaps provide a one stop “big picture" view. With a great sitemap, a visitor is able to discern the overall structure and purpose of a site very quickly. Less time spent searching means more time spent on the desired pages and possibly lower bounce rates. Your visitors won’t have to visit several pages just to figure out what your site is about or where the information is.
There has been many a time, looking for a particular web page, that I could not remember in which section it was that my information was originally found. Sitemaps simply provide another navigation tool. The larger your site becomes, the more useful a sitemap.
Search Engine Optimization
Sitemap creation establishes a single page for which every other page on your website is linked to. Just think, once a search engine spider has found this page, it is now able to locate via links, every other page in your entire site. Yes, your pages are found using the menus and links therein however a sitemap lays it all out in one place. It almost guarantees that, once it is found, all of your content will be crawled and indexed by Google. It is for this reason that the link to your sitemap is usually placed conveniently on your home page.
Relevance - Organization
As mentioned already, a sitemap provides a great overall view of your site’s structure. As additional content is added, it is the sitemap that provides a view that allows you to easily take into consideration the existing hierarchy. Over time this results in a more organized site, everything according to relevance.
Based upon the above discussion, it is to see why a separate sitemap could be useful. When used properly, a sitemap will help to keep your website’s content organized and easily accessible.
