Sitemap is basically the map that contain information of all located resource on a website. It helps users, as well as search engines, to easily explore a website for their required object. On the other hand it also helps them to improve their search (for user) and indexing experience (for search engines).
What are Different Types of Sitemaps?
There are principally two types of sitemaps;
- HTML sitemap (written in Hypertext Markup Language)
- XML sitemap (written in Extensible Markup Language)
XML Sitemaps can have two types.
- Index Sitemap (how many URL sitemaps a website have)
- URL Sitemap (contain final information of URLs on webpage)
XML sitemaps are further divided into 3 different categories.
- Sitemaps for webpages (commonly known as xml sitemap in community)
- Image sitemaps (details of images and their URLs on website)
- Video sitemaps (what webpages have videos embedded in them and their details)
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So, final tree of sitemaps categorization we have is;
- XML Sitemap
- Index Sitemap
- URL Sitemap
- Sitemaps for Webpages
- Sitemaps for Images
- Sitemaps for videos
- HTML Sitemaps
What is an HTML Sitemap?
HTML sitemap, as stated above, is a map that contains information about website resources and their location. These sitemaps are primarily for users to assist them to find their desired item on website or to explore a website easily. Let’s take an example:
A website has thousands of webpage categorized in different sections in form of directories. Now with this massive quantity of webpages user can feel himself at nowhere when he lands on such website. The first thing that can assist him is search option. But if he has no luck then HTML sitemap is the last resort for him where he can explore the website.
Secondly, as HTML sitemap links the resources internally and internal links help in improving keyword rankings; these sitemaps also help linked webpages in their rankings with search engines.
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What are XML Sitemaps?
XML is basically a language that store information about an object in organized or pre-defined format. This format is not understandable by humans but search engines do understand what is written in it and the purpose of writing. So, we can say that;
XML sitemaps are primarily for search engines to have a map of internal/external resources of website with their information. Fast and secure indexing of website by search engines rely on these sitemaps.
What do We Write in XML Sitemap?
We write information about objects like its location of availability, importance, type of object, how frequently it gets change etc.
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Nice article…..
Thanks for sharing with us.
Nice article, I recommend the users to enable their site robots.txt after completing sitemap since it will be easier for bots and webcrawler to read the contents of your site and index it on Google, which will improve your search engine ranking.
Nice article! It really helped me to understand the difference between HTML Sitemap and XML Sitemap.
Nice explanation about sitemap in SEO, thank you so much for sharing this useful information.
Nice article! It helped me to fix my sitemap related confusion, so thanks.
Thanks Mukhtar, Glad you liked it.