Want to know, how to create a HTML Sitemap using Simple Sitemap WordPress plugin? You have come to the right place.
A sitemap is nothing but a blueprint of your website or blog.
If your website has a sitemap, the search engines can crawl and index all of your website’s posts & pages easily.
In this article, you will learn to create a html sitemap using Simple Sitemap plugin.
When you come across a Sitemap, the first thing that might come to your mind is a XML Sitemap, since sitemaps are usually made in Extensible Markup Language (XML).
But, sitemaps can also be created in Hypertext Mark Up Language (HTML)
So, let’s first understand the basic difference between XML Sitemap & HTML Sitemap.
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Difference Between XML Sitemap & HTML Sitemap
The basic difference between the two is that, a XML Sitemap is designed for the search engines to crawl where as a HTML Sitemap is designed for audience to browse.
Search engines such as Google can easily crawl through sitemaps made in Extensive Markup Language (XML).
On the other hand, a HTML sitemap is a list of all your post & pages in a very simple & organized manner, so that the audience can go through them easily.
Advantages Of HTML Sitemap Over XML Sitemap
Though a XML Sitemap is prevalent for the websites today, a HTML Sitemap has it’s own advantage.
HTML Sitemap Enhances User Experience
As discussed above, a XML Sitemap is made for the search engines to crawl & index, but it does not give a user friendly experience, since the sitemap is made up of links.
However, a HTML Sitemap has a very organized & structured way of displaying data, where the user’s can browse through the website effortlessly, since the sitemap also includes Anchor Text along with the links.
HTML Sitemap Helps In SEO
We all know that, meta titles and meta descriptions include keywords that are extremely useful for SEO.
With the help of a HTML Sitemap, you can include these keywords in the anchor text to enhance the SEO of your website, in turn improving the ranking & making it more visible on search engines like Google.
Create A HTML Sitemap Using Simple Sitemap WordPress Plugin
Simple Sitemap plugin is one of the most widely used plugin in the market today.
The main feature of this plugin is that, it can build and preview the sitemap directly in the post editor.
Simple Sitemap helps improve your SEO ranking by automatically generating an HTML sitemap of your content. The plugin is useful to add a full sitemap literally in seconds & you don’t need to have any coding skills for that.
There are also a number of features available at your disposal. Simple Sitemap is currently used by over 90,000 websites.
Install & Activate the Simple Sitemap plugin in your WordPress website. Check out, how to install and activate a WordPress plugin.
After you have activated the plugin, create a new page named HTML Sitemap in your WordPress website by going to Pages => Add New.
The plugin will add two new blocks to your WordPress website. You can easily use these block to create a HTML Sitemap.
All you need to do is click the ‘+’ on the ‘HTML Sitemap’ page icon, type ‘Simple Sitemap’ in to the text field & then select the Simple Sitemap block.
There is another block named ‘Simple Sitemap Group’ that is present along with ‘Simple Sitemap’. ‘Simple Sitemap Group’ creates a branching visual sitemap.
Anyway once you have added the Simple Sitemap block, it will automatically create WordPress website’s HTML sitemap.
On the right side of the page, you will find options to customize.
You can display Posts or Pages or both Post & Pages & also sort the sitemap by ‘Title‘, ‘Date‘, ‘ID‘, ‘Author‘ & ‘Name‘ in an ascending or descending order.
You can also display the excerpt for the pages or posts listed, and enable or disable links, if you want.
After you are done with setting up everything, Publish the page & Preview it. It will look something like this,
Conclusion
Having a HTML Sitemap along with a XML Sitemap has it’s advantages, especially when the over all SEO of your website is concerned.
To make your website more user friendly for your audience & to rank higher in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), include a HTML Sitemap in your WordPress Website.