"Eighteen Varied Sitemap Examples for Diverse Websites, with Included Guidelines"

In the world of digital marketing, sitemaps play a crucial role in helping search engines navigate and understand a website's structure. This article will delve into the various types of sitemaps, best practices for different types of websites, and the benefits they offer.

Understanding Sitemaps

At its core, a sitemap is a map of a website's pages. It serves as a directory for search engines, helping them find and index all important pages efficiently. Sitemaps are usually found at URLs like "yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml" or "yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml".

XML Sitemaps

XML sitemaps are designed for search engines and provide a structured format about the pages on a site and when they were last updated. They matter most for SEO as they help search engines find and then index content. While XML sitemaps won't directly improve rankings, they can significantly aid in the process.

For large websites, best practices for XML sitemaps include using a sitemap index file to organize multiple child sitemaps, configuring the system to automatically generate and update sitemaps when content changes, only including canonical versions of pages, and considering compressing sitemaps to save bandwidth if necessary.

HTML Sitemaps

HTML sitemaps, on the other hand, are designed for human visitors. They are actual pages on a website that list all content in a hierarchical structure, making it easier for visitors to find what they're looking for when they can't access what they need via navigation menus. However, it's essential to note that an HTML sitemap is not a substitute for good UX design.

Sitemaps for Different Types of Websites

Ecommerce Sites

For ecommerce sites, best practices include including every available product in the sitemap, removing or deprioritizing permanently discontinued products, excluding filter combinations that create duplicate content issues, including hreflang attributes for stores with multiple countries or languages, and considering creating separate sitemaps for different categories if there are thousands of products.

A notable example of an effective ecommerce sitemap is Gymshark's, which splits URLs across pages, collections, and products, and includes sitemaps for hreflang and regional variants of the site's pages.

Local Businesses

Local businesses should consider including location pages if there are multiple, categorizing them in a separate sitemap file if there are many locations, and updating any key page URLs and adding a "lastmod" parameter when necessary.

Pimlico Plumbers' sitemap, for instance, includes a location-sitemap.xml file that is particularly useful for organizing all of its locations.

SaaS Sites

For SaaS sites, best practices include prioritizing feature and landing pages that target primary conversion keywords, including knowledge base and technical documentation, organizing pages based on the customer journey, excluding pages like dashboards that are behind a login, removing tracking parameters and unnecessary URL variations, and considering implementing hreflang if targeting a global audience.

Docusign's sitemap index contains individual sitemaps for things like blog posts and PDFs, but it implements hreflang for its language and regional variants in a way that can be challenging to manage.

Corporate Websites

Corporate websites should include important quarterly reports, annual statements, and shareholder information pages, prioritizing press releases, media kits, and company news. Consider using different sitemaps for each regional variation.

ClickUp's sitemap, for example, is clean and simple, with a main sitemap index that splits into landing pages, blog posts, various types of pages, and programmatically generated pages.

Other Notable Examples

Weather.com's sitemap is extensive and well-organized, with separate sitemaps for different languages and regions, and sitemaps categorized by things like videos, news, articles, and forecast types.

eBay's sitemap is massive, with multiple sitemaps for its .com domain, and sitemaps compressed to save bandwidth.

Deloitte's sitemap index primarily contains sitemaps for all of its regional variants.

TSMC's sitemap includes annual reports, business contacts, policies, and declarations, and uses Drupal to create it, but Google ignores the change frequency and priority values added by Drupal.

Conclusion

Sitemaps are an essential tool for ensuring search engines can effectively crawl and index a website. By following best practices for your specific type of website, you can maximize the benefits of sitemaps and improve your site's SEO.