Is An XML Or HTML Sitemap Better For SEO? [Answered]
XML and HTML sitemaps help search engines and users navigate a website efficiently, improving crawlability and user experience. While XML sitemaps are designed for search engines, HTML sitemaps focus on guiding visitors through site structure.
Search Engine Journal has answered the question, ‘Is An XML Or HTML Sitemap Better For SEO?’ as part of its Ask an SEO series.
Helen Pollitt says, “The purpose of the XML sitemap is to help search bots understand which pages on your website should be crawled, as well as giving them extra information about those pages.
The XML sitemap can help bots identify pages on the site that would otherwise be difficult to find. This can be orphaned pages, those with low internal links, or even pages that have changed recently that you may want to encourage the bots to recrawl.
Best Practices For XML Sitemaps
Most search bots will understand XML sitemaps that follow the sitemaps.org protocol. This protocol defines the necessary location of the XML sitemap on a site, schema it needs to use to be understood by bots, and how to prove ownership of domains in the instance of cross-domain references.”
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