XML Sitemap vs HTML Sitemap: Do You Need Both for SEO?

Crawling and indexing your website are essential factors in SEO. That’s what sitemaps do. Two common sitemap types for SEO are HTML sitemap and XML sitemap. While an HTML sitemap is for human visitors to navigate the website easily, an XML sitemap is for the search engines to crawl and index your site efficiently. Do you need both for your website, or will any one do? That’s the question we are trying to answer through this article. We shall look at HTML sitemap vs XML sitemap, its benefits, and best practices.

What Is XML Sitemap?

What is sitemap.xml in SEO? XML stands for Extensible Markup Language, and an XML sitemap is a file that contains all the website URLs in XML format. It exists in the root directory of your website. It is usually named sitemap. XML. The purpose of an XML sitemap is for the search engines to crawl and index it efficiently. This sitemap informs the search engine of the important files in your website. It also gives other information about the URL, such as the importance of the page and the last modified date. It also has the change frequency to indicate the frequency of updating content and the priority values, which is a score indicating important pages. The importance of an XML sitemap is that it helps the search engines to crawl the site easily. This file cannot be read by humans, rather, it is for the search engines.

An XML sitemap looks like this;

HTML Sitemaps

HTML sitemaps are for the users. It is a web page with a list of links for ease of navigation. Looking at the sitemap, the users will get an idea of the website and its important pages. In the sitemap, the pages are arranged according to various categories and subcategories. This makes it easier for users to navigate through the pages and provides a good user experience. It is usually named website.com/sitemap. 

An HTML sitemap looks like this;

Image Source: Apple

HTML Sitemap vs XML Sitemap

The major difference between HTML Sitemap vs XML sitemap is that the former is for humans and the latter is for search engines. While an HTML sitemap is created for the easy navigation of web pages by humans, an XML sitemap is created for search engines to crawl and understand the important pages. Now let’s look at the benefits of HTML sitemap vs XML sitemap.

XML Sitemap SEO Benefits

• The main purpose of an XML sitemap is for the search engines to find and index the important pages. This helps for faster indexing of the pages in search engines, helping you rank faster and increasing the chances of visibility.
• Without an XML sitemap, it takes time to index your website. However, with an XML sitemap, it notifies Google about the content updation or the latest content added to the website. This makes for faster indexing.
• The importance of an XML sitemap is that search engines know which pages are important. This is especially important when dealing with large websites.

HTML Sitemap SEO Benefits

• An important HTML sitemap SEO benefits is that it improves the ranking by creating a better user experience.
• With an HTML Sitemap, you can create internal links to various pages of your website. This is an essential factor in SEO.
• An HTML Sitemap makes it easy for search engines to find your content for crawling.
• Large websites can be arranged into categories and subcategories, which provides for better site navigation and a good user experience.

Difference Between XML and HTML Sitemaps

An XML sitemap and HTML sitemap comparison will help you identify how each of them serves a purpose in SEO. The main difference between XML sitemap vs HTML sitemaps is that XML is created for search engines, while HTML is for human visitors. An XML sitemap is difficult for humans to decipher as it comes in XML code. Whereas the HTML sitemap can be seen by human visitors and it is available on the website. It is written in HTML. Another difference between XML and HTML sitemaps is that XML sitemap is created without any order, whereas HTML sitemap is created in a logical order with categories and subcategories. When doing a XML sitemap and HTML sitemap comparison, amidst these differences, there is one thing in common that both improve SEO efficiency. While one enables search engines to crawl the website, the other improves the user experience, which results in better search engine rankings. 

Best Practices for Sitemap

• In XML, you can prioritize the pages that need importance. This can be done using a priority tag. In the priority tag, add values from 0.0 to 1.0 and assign them to the pages according to the priority.
• Only add pages that need to be indexed on the sitemap. Pages that need not be indexed should be avoided.
• To inform the search engines of the changing frequency of the content, you can add the tag called <changefreq>. There are various values for the <changefreq> tag, such as never, yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, and always.
• The size of the sitemap should not exceed 50 MB or 50,000 URLs. If it exceeds, you can create multiple sitemaps.
• Submit your sitemap to the Google Search Console to help search engines discover your content faster.
• Regularly update your sitemap to remove broken URLs for better crawl efficiency.

Do You Need Both for SEO

When the question of XML sitemap vs HTML sitemap arises, the answer would be, Yes, both XML and HTML sitemaps are beneficial for SEO and to offer a better user experience. XML is mainly meant for search engines to efficiently crawl and index the important pages on the site. While an HTML sitemap is for human visitors, it improves the site navigation and enhances the user experience. It also enhances internal linking, which can be beneficial for SEO. Understanding why are internal links important for SEO? As it helps ensure that both XML and HTML sitemaps guide search engines effectively, making the website more discoverable and accessible to visitors. This approach is especially beneficial for large websites or e-commerce platforms with several product pages, as having both types of sitemaps ensures better ranking and visibility.

Conclusion

In this article, we explored XML sitemap vs HTML sitemap, the difference between XML and HTML sitemap, and its benefits for SEO. Both HTML and XML sitemaps are created for better ranking and to ensure visibility. XML is necessary for SEO benefits, whereas HTML improves the user experience. Integrating both on your website is a powerful SEO strategy. For businesses looking to improve their online presence, using both types of sitemaps can be a successful strategy. If you are perplexed about how to create and implement them in the right way, contact GTECH Information Technology, a digital marketing agency in Dubai with years of experience in guiding businesses towards better rankings.