Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Where to link to HTML Sitemap?
-
After searching this morning and finding unclear answers I decided to ask my SEOmoz friends a few questions.
Should you have an HTML sitemap?
If so, where should you link to the HTML sitemap from?
Should you use a noindex, follow tag?
Thank you
-
I always create one and link from the footer text navigation. It is beneficial for usability and search engine spidering. Also. I never add special qualifiers to links like follow etc etc unless it is in the negative (don't follow etc) and even then you can omit pages via robots.txt
-
They are also on all the service pages at the top.
-
If the site is built well, then all pages would be accessible via 3 clicks. So html sitemaps really aren't needed.
-
If something is popular, would it be at the bottom?
-
You're right. I have never clicked on a footer sitemap link either. I have a popular pages section right about the footer. Maybe that be fine work.
-
I do have XML sitemaps setup correctly. I decided to just add it on the homepage for human visitors and on the 404 pages. The noindex idea was so Google didn't index the sitemap but that's when I had it on every page. I guess it doesn't matter if it's just on the homepage.
-
I do have XML sitemaps setup correctly. I decided to just add it on the homepage for human visitors and on the 404 pages. The noindex idea was so Google didn't index the sitemap but that's when I had it on every page. I guess it doesn't matter if it's just on the homepage.
-
Hi Will,
Personally, I approach this from two perspectives: Usability and SEO.
Usability: I don't think I've ever clicked on a footer sitemap myself when looking for things on a website. If organic search does not take me to what I want, I do a bit more browsing with a last ditch effort using the keyword search box. If that doesn't work, I bounce back to my organic search results and try another site or refine my search.
Therefore, I removed the footer sitemap from our ecommerce site and created a left nav link to additional categories. The link is above the fold and I call it "Additional Categories." I am shocked at the volume of visitors who go to that page - far more than every visited our footer sitemap.
SEO: In my opinion, a sitemap moves links up to the second tier click level because they are buried too deep and don't get the juice. These pages need to be moved up perhaps because the link structure and hierarchy are not sound or maybe it is just too big of a challenge to flatten out all portions of a site.
Therefore, I flatten out and improve the link structure (or as sound as you can get). If there are categories that warrant indexing, but are not best sellers, I put them on the additional categories page. If some of the categories are 3 clicks (sometimes 4) and difficult to flatten out or fix, I put them in the additional categories page so people can see them and spiders can crawl them. Our site currently does not have the authority to force the juice to deeper penetration.
-
I feel html site maps are no longer needed if you correctly setup XML sitemaps, and also link to them from your robots.txt file.
But if you still want them for users, then I would put it in the footer, and have Google Index and Follow.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Hreflang in header...should I do a Sitemap?
A client implemented hreflang tags in the site header. MOZ says you aren't supposed to do an hreflang Sitemap as well. My question is how should I do a Sitemap now (or should I do one at all)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | navdm0 -
Are HTML Sitemaps Still Effective With "Noindex, Follow"?
A site we're working on has hundreds of thousands of inventory pages that are generally "orphaned" pages. To reach them, you need to do a lot of faceting on the search results page. They appear in our XML sitemaps as well, but I'd still consider these orphan pages. To assist with crawling and indexation, we'd like to create HTML sitemaps to link to these pages. Due to the nature (and categorization) of these products, this would mean we'll be creating thousands of individual HTML sitemap pages, which we're hesitant to put into the index. Would the sitemaps still be effective if we add a noindex, follow meta tag? Does this indicate lower quality content in some way, or will it make no difference in how search engines will handle the links therein?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mothner0 -
H3 Tags - Should I Link to my content Articles- ? And do I have to many H3 tags/ Links as it is ?
Hello All, On my ecommerce landing pages, I currently have links to my products as H3 Tags. I also have useful guides displayed on the page with links useful articles we have written (they currently go to my news section). I am wondering if I should put those article links as additional H3 tags as well for added seo benefit or do I have to many tags as it is ?. A link to my Landing Page I am talking about is - http://goo.gl/h838RW Screenshot of my h1-h6 tags - http://imgur.com/hLtX0n7 I enclose screenshot my guides and also of my H1-H6 tags. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
How to detect a bad link and remove ?
As per google penguin, all the low quality back links are going to affect the website SERPS hugely. So, we need to find all the bad back links and then remove them one by one. What I would like to know is, what tool do you use to find all the bad back links ? And how do we know which is a bad back link or bad website, where our link should not be there ? Then what service what do you suggest for back links removal. I contacted LinkDelete.com and they quoted me 97$ for a month to remove all links in less than 3 weeks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monali123
Let me know, what you suggest.0 -
Do links to PDF's on my site pass "link juice"?
Hi, I have recently started a project on one of my sites, working with a branch of the U.S. government, where I will be hosting and publishing some of their PDF documents for free for people to use. The great SEO side of this is that they link to my site. The thing is, they are linking directly to the PDF files themselves, not the page with the link to the PDF files. So my question is, does that give me any SEO benefit? While the PDF is hosted on my site, there are no links in it that would allow a spider to start from the PDF and crawl the rest of my site. So do I get any benefit from these great links? If not, does anybody have any suggestions on how I could get credit for them. Keep in mind that editing the PDF's are not allowed by the government. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft0 -
XML Sitemap index within a XML sitemaps index
We have a similar problem to http://www.seomoz.org/q/can-a-xml-sitemap-index-point-to-other-sitemaps-indexes Can a XML sitemap index point to other sitemaps indexes? According to the "Unique Doll Clothing" example on this link, it seems possible http://www.seomoz.org/blog/multiple-xml-sitemaps-increased-indexation-and-traffic Can someone share an XML Sitemap index within a XML sitemaps index example? We are looking for the format to implement the same on our website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lakshdeep0 -
301 redirect from .html to non .html?
Previously our site was using this as our URL structure: www.site.com/page.html. A few months ago we updated our URL structure to this: www.site.com/page & we're not using the .html. I've read over this guide & don't see anywhere that discusses this: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection. I've currently got a programmer looking into, but am always a bit weary with their workarounds, as I'd previously had them cause more problems then fix it. Here is the solution he is looking to do: The way that I am doing the redirect is fine. The problem is of where to put the code. The issue is that the files are .html files that need to be redirected to the same url with out a .html on them. I can see if I can add that to the 404 redirect page if there is one inside of there and see if that does the trick. That way if there is no page that exists without the .html then it will still be a 404 page. However if it is there then it will work as normal. I will see what I can find and get back. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, BJ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seointern0 -
Does 302 pass link juice?
Hi! We have our content under two subdomains, one for the English language and one for Spanish. Depending on the language of the browser, there's a 302 redirecting to one of this subdomains. However, our main domain (which has no content) is receiving a lot of links - people rather link to mydomain.com than to en.mydomain.com. Does the 302 passing any link juice? If so, to which subdomain? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bodaclick0