HTML sitemap is one of the most effective strategies to distribute your links evenly throughout your website. Although a lot of webmasters and bloggers neglect it, you should not take it for granted.
First, what is an HTML sitemap? It is a page of your website which outlines the complete structure of it. It also links to all the significant pages of your site, which is very crucial. There are some steps to boost your search engine optimization.
We should mention that people confuse an HTML sitemap with an XML sitemap. You can argue that they are both outlining the structure of your website; you are probably right. But there is a difference. Only search engine bots can understand an XML sitemap, which means if you visit it, you will see only codes. These codes can help you to tackle problems related to indexation or crawling issues. So if there is no problem with them, you may not need an XML sitemap on your website.
On the other hand, an HTML sitemap is useful no matter what. For human visitors, it is precious, because it helps them to find what they want quickly.
Ideally, people want to have all the pages linking to the HTML sitemap and vice versa. You can neglect non-important pages in this process. For example, you can overpass pages like a privacy policy or contact info. To do this, you should put a link to the HTML sitemap on the footer of your site or the main navigation menu.
And finally, you can get external backlinks that point to your HTML sitemap. It can boost your search engine optimization. As a result, you will have your link juice passing directly to all the pages on your website. However, instead of your homepage, you should consider pointing your byline link to an HTML sitemap.
We have developed search strategies for leading brands to small and medium sized businesses across many industries in the US and worldwide.