HTML & XML Sitemaps for Ecommerce SEO
Sitemaps are an important part of any ecommerce SEO strategy. Not only do they make it easier for search engine robots to crawl and index your site more intelligently — taking some of the guesswork out of their job — they can also help improve the user experience.
In other words, sitemaps contribute to creating a technically sound website that is fast and easy for both users and search engine robots to navigate and understand. When done correctly, the reward could be higher rankings in the search engine results pages. Below, learn more about the different types of sitemaps and the role they play in ecommerce SEO. Even though sitemaps are included in the most basic technical SEO checklist items, there may be some complications during creating & submitting them.
What is a Sitemap?
Simply put, a sitemap is a page or file that helps both search engines or users find the most important pages on your ecommerce site quickly and easily. Think of sitemaps like a blueprint or roadmap that outlines the URLs that you consider to be quality pages, and would like to be crawled, indexed, and ranked.
Likewise, you should exclude those URLs that don’t represent typical landing pages and that you don’t want to serve as the first page of a user’s journey from your sitemap. This doesn’t mean these pages won’t still be crawled by search engines; rather, it signals that they are not your most important, SEO-relevant pages.
Hiring a technical SEO specialist to create a sitemap is considered to be a best practice for all websites, but is especially critical for ecommerce sites. That’s because most ecommerce sites have hundreds — if not thousands — of product pages, which may be added or updated frequently. Having such a large volume of URLs makes it more time-consuming and difficult for search engines to crawl your entire site and identify which pages are most relevant.
Why does this matter? Search engines like Google want to present their users with the best possible results for their query. If they have a difficult time finding your most important pages and attributing value to them, those URLs will most likely not rank highly.
There are two different types of ecommerce sitemaps: XML sitemaps and HTML sitemaps. Keep reading to learn more about the key functions and SEO benefits of each type.
XML Sitemaps
An XML sitemap is a representative list of URLs you present to the search engines to indicate that they should crawl those pages. For large ecommerce websites, this file (along with the robots.txt file) can be essential in communicating to the search engines the important pages on the site, especially as new product and category pages are added or updated.
It’s important to keep your XML sitemap up-to-date, as including duplicate, noindex, or other unusual URLs in your XML sitemap can confuse the search engines as to which URLs are important to crawl. This can adversely affect your overall organic site health. Most XML sitemaps are configured to present all new pages on a website on a weekly basis.
XML sitemaps are a highly useful tool for strengthening your other technical SEO efforts. They play a key role in post-migration SEO, as they are often the first record the search engines see of new site URLs. When properly configured, the XML sitemap of your old site can also help get your 301 redirects processed in a timely manner.
Ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Magento have options for auto-generated sitemaps that can be edited with some effort, while other platforms may require a manual upload. In WordPress, it is also possible to create and maintain a sitemap using a plugin such as Google XML Sitemaps.
HTML Sitemaps
While XML sitemaps are primarily hidden from web users and are designed to be used by search engines, HTML sitemaps are created specifically for users. HTML sitemaps use anchor links to display the most important categories, products, and pages on your ecommerce site, making it easier and faster for visitors to find what they are looking for.
Even though HTML sitemaps are not created for search engines, they are still helpful for SEO. Because the HTML sitemap is a regular page just like any other on the site, you can add SEO keywords to the anchor text pointing to your important pages. This is a great opportunity to build more internal links on your site, which can boost SEO. Additionally, headlines can be utilized for SEO in the same way you would use them for a blog post.
HTML sitemaps are often found in the footer of ecommerce websites, meaning they are present on every page and must be crawled by the search engines as they make their way through your site. Because of this, you can use your HTML sitemap as a backup of your XML sitemap in the event that Google is having trouble crawling your site from that file.
Final Thoughts
When used alone or together, properly configured XML and HTML sitemaps can be a highly effective tool for boosting your ecommerce site’s technical SEO and user experience. Like with most technical SEO objectives, you will get the most out of your investment by hiring a qualified SEO expert to create, implement, and monitor your ecommerce sitemap.
Need help creating your HTML sitemap, XML sitemap, or both? Contact Whitecap for more information and a free quote.