What’s the easiest way to let search engines such as Google to crawl your website? The best SEO practice is to submit your website and sitemap of it to search engines. Yes, I know 99.9% of you know this basic knowledge. BUT, which sitemap format will you choose? HTML sitemap or XML sitemap?
Let’s see what Matt Cutts says on the video
If cannot see the video in the post, click here to watch.
Here I sum up Matt Cutts’ points
- Google likes both HTML sitemap and XML sitemap
- Google does not guarantee to crawl links from XML sitemap
- HTML sitemap will definitely help Google to find links
- Additionally, Users prefer HTML sitemap (at least I do, I will show you later in this post)
- If you can only create one sitemap, create HTML sitemap
- If you can, do both HTML sitemap and XML sitemap
Well, I guess you know the answer already, maybe it varies for other search engines such as Bing, Yahoo. But if you wish your sitemap perform better in Google, you’d better create both, or at least HTML sitemap.
Plus, Mr.Google uses HTML sitemap as well, check it via http://www.google.com/sitemap.html
Do people really prefer HTML sitemap to XML sitemap?
I will showcase my website – seoblogmoney.com as an example.
(Here is the link if you cannot see it clear: seoblogmoney xml sitemap)
As you can see the image above, there is no anchor text and layout is not really what I expected (That is to say, I think it’s ugly). Maybe you are saying, you can definitely build a better looking XML sitemap with some coding knowledge. But not all of us are web developers, I bet there are a large percentage of bloggers have very limited coding skills or even no skills at all. Another problem is, I use xml sitemap generator, I don’t know how to display it in a page.
Now, please have a glimpse on my HTML sitemap.
(Here is the link if you cannot see it clear: seoblogmoney html sitemap)
Do you have the same feeling as I do? WOW, it’s eye-catching and it has a really nice layout. I just simply love it, all I have to do is activate this plugin, create a new page, and then input the page ID into plugin configuration page and IT IS DONE.
I am now pleased to have a HTML sitemap on my website, what should I do?
If you work for a company, please ask your web developers, it’s not very difficult for them.
If you work on your own wordpress blog, does not have tonnes of coding skills (just like me), please follow the instruction below:
1. Find and add this HTML sitemap plugin – PS Auto Sitemap
2. Create a new page named “sitemap” and paste the code below into this “sitemap” page, via HTML mode (DO NOT use visual mode)
3. Find page ID for page “sitemap”, this is a bit tricky especially if you installed SEO plugin already.
- If you don’t have any SEO plugins installed, simply check the URL of created page, post ID should be written after question mark.
- If you installed SEO plugins and URL has been re-written automatically, then try this:
Go to your page editing dashboard, right click on “sitemap” page title, view the source code. Then you will be able to find post ID in this piece of code – “www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/page.php?action=edit&post=xx”, xx is your post ID.
4. Input the post ID to PS Auto Sitemap configuration.
Soooo, well, do you find this article any help at all? Will you make your choice now or you have your own opinion? Please share it here. Also, if you have any difficulty configure PS Auto Sitemap, please comment here, I will try my best to help you.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
i would also prefer having html sitemap with the help of PS Auto Sitemap generator.
just downloaded the plugin and will try following those steps by u. actually it will be complicated for me as i have seo plugins installed.
anyways if i come across some probs then will ask for your help. Thanx for sharing
What seo plugin do you have? I don't think it will be too complicated. If you have any problem with installation, feel free to email me or leave a comment here.
Well explained. Sitemaps are really important.Read few more tips on How to create HTML and XML Sitemap (Site Map) for your website
http://www.globinch.com/2010/04/29/how-to-create-html-and-xml-sitemap-site-map-for-your-website/