Internet Marketing Explained Lesson #1

What is the difference between a HTML Sitemap and a XML Sitemap?

This is a common question we get asked here at Web Design High Wycombe and as usual we would like to write a blog to help and share the answer.  Its actually very simple (easy for a web developer to say!).

There are two types of site map as our title states, the first is the HTML sitemap. This is seen by human users as a page on the website. It simply clearly lists a link to every page on the website, this is particularly useful for usability on very large websites.

The second is an XML sitemap, this is a file placed on the webspace hosting for Google only, its best description is a snapshot of your sites page structure. It tells Google what pages are on the site instantly when it crawls the site, Google then hopefully will list these pages in its search results.

It’s very important to have a site map especially if you are a brand new site going live for the first time as an XML sitemap can speed up the time it takes Google to first index your website (show you in it’s results). We wont get to techy with you and explain how to make an XML sitemap as thats not what this blog is about, but if you are having trouble feel free to drop us an email.