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People only use them 7% of the time. 7 years ago the number was at 27%. Despite the low numbers, Jakob Nielsen's latest usability study on sitemaps states that having them done right is a good thing because they "don't hurt," "cost very little" and "do help a few people."
I would add a 4th reason to do them right: search engines. As Bradley Leese has written (see Part 6), sitemaps:
- offer search bots "an additional point of access" for the individual pages of your site
- "document the physical directory structure" of your site
One component of top search results and Google PageRank is Google's ability to explore and comprehend your site. The easier it can find and categorize your site, the greater your chances will be of getting listed high on its result pages.
Read the rest of Jakob Nielsen's article or download the entire 176-pg. study for detailed instruction on proper sitemap structuring.
Do you have a sitemap? When was the last time you checked yours?
Don't leave your visitors--human or robot--out in the cold.
Photo courtesy of QTea via Flickr.
About the Author: Paul RichlovskyA member of the company since 2006, Paul is a College of Wooster graduate who has served in various writing, editing, and account management capacities. He currently helps lead Fathom's internal marketing strategy, contributing to brand and product activation while helping manage content on the company website. A former teacher of English as a foreign language, he has previously written about vocational education on YouShouldGoToSchool.com.
Comments
4 Comments so far4 Responses to “Want More Usability and Visibility? Check Your Sitemap”
There are so many usability practices that go hand-in-hand with SEO. I'm glad to see you post about these topics. In my experience, leads, conversions and bounce rates seem to remain stagnant if website usability is ignored.
...and remember to update the sitemap if you add or remove pages!
It is not necessary to have every single page in your sitemap, but it easy to forget to update it when adding content.
You would also hate to have too many broken links to your own site by neglecting to update it as pages are removed or renamed.
One of the main challenges in our industry is how to make a website both human friendly and robot friendly. Adding a sitemap page is a perfect example of accomplishing both of those goals.
Why won't you use a sitemap? It is a map of your site and tell the search engine all your pages. It never hurt to have the search engine know all your pages on website.