Disclosure: This post may contain some affiliate links. This means we may receive a small commission when you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.

HTML Sitemap Generator? Umm…

Yes, most bloggers pay attention to XML Sitemaps but they often forget about HTML Sitemaps.

XML Sitemaps guide the Google bots to index the web pages, whereas, HTML Sitemaps guide your visitors to navigate your site.

Do you think that HTML sitemaps are no longer important for your website?

If yes, then my friend you are missing an opportunity to grow your site in terms of SEO.

Here in this article, I’ll guide you on how an HTML Sitemap Generator helps your site to provide a user-friendly interface.

This is the prime reason that I created a post on Visual Sitemap Generators.

You’ll learn how to create HTML sitemaps for the website and how important are they?

HTML Sitemap Generator: Why is it necessary?

HTML Sitemap Generator
  • Save

A Complete Beginner’s Guide to HTML Sitemap Generator

Well, before entering deeper into this context, it should be known to everyone what does a sitemap mean?

What is a Sitemap?

In simple terms, a Sitemap is basically a list of web pages organized hierarchically that a website contains. This list of web pages is accessible to both search engine crawlers and users.

It stores information about your posts, pages, categories, and tags available on your website.

Suppose you have a book containing a table of contents or index at the start. This table of contents tells you about different topics or content that is available on several pages in the book.

Similarly, Sitemap behaves like a table of contents on a website. It tells search engines and users what information they stored on a particular website.

Basically, Sitemaps are of two types-

  • XML Sitemaps
  • HTML Sitemaps

XML Sitemaps

XML Sitemaps are basically not for users but are needed for search engines. The structure of these is in a way that tells search crawlers about the posts and pages on a website that should be indexed.

XML sitemaps contain URLs of all the web pages of a website and signal the bots to crawl and ultimately index them.

So, it is very important for you to have an XML sitemap of your website to index it well on search engines. Also, this file should be updated regularly. If you often update the XML sitemaps, then it expands the chance of getting more visitors to your site.

HTML Sitemaps

We create Visual sitemaps for the users. As XML sitemaps guide web crawlers to crawl a site, similarly, HTML Sitemaps guide the users to get the updated content on a website.

In a nutshell, we use XML sitemaps for the back end while HTML sitemaps for the front end.

It is a well-organized structure containing different categories that are subdivided into several posts and pages. Visual Sitemap makes it easy for visitors to quickly find their area of interest on the site. Here is an HTML sitemap example:

HTML sitemap example
  • Save

4 Amazing HTML Sitemap Generators

Here, I’m describing the best HTML sitemap plugin for WordPress. These will simply create a dedicated Visual sitemap for your website.

Now, let’s look at these sitemap generators and understand them.

#1. Sitemap by Click5

HTM Sitemap Generator
  • Save
Source: WordPress.org

If you want an All-In-One solution for your website’s sitemaps, then Sitemap by Click5 is the perfect answer for you. It is a plugin that generates both XML and HTML Sitemaps for your website.

Besides this, it generates a robots.txt file that guides the web crawlers on when and what should be crawled?

It’s easy to configure and allows you to generate a Visual sitemap using a shortcode.

HTML Sitemap Generator
  • Save

You just need to create a page for Visual sitemaps and put the shortcode to visualize sitemaps for your audience.

So, if you are looking for the best sitemap generator plugin, then you should try it.

#2. Simple Sitemap

Simple Sitemap
  • Save
Source: WordPress.org

The Simple Sitemap plugin is well developed to create HTML sitemaps in a tabbed layout.

After activation, it generates visual sitemaps for your website. In the previous version of WordPress, you had to put a shortcode to display sitemaps on the page.

If you are using a classic editor, then still you can use the shortcodes.

While, with the latest version, you get blocks in your WordPress editor. You simply need to click on the plus sign to create a block and search for a simple sitemap section and click on it. That’s it.

The Simple Sitemap plugin is added to the editor. Now configure the sitemap options from the inspection panel as per your need.

The plugin also comes with a paid version named Simple Sitemap Pro. Well, the pro features of the Simple Sitemap Plugin allow you the following features:

  • You can display any Nav Menu as a sitemap
  • Hierarchical parent pages can be shown as links or plain text
  • You can customize sitemap titles for particular pages
  • You can order the posts as title, date, or id
  • Fully mobile responsive and easy to generate sitemaps in seconds

There are many more features that provide you with a beautiful layout of sitemaps.

👉 HTML Sitemap Generator is a good choice to enhance SEO.

#3. WP Sitemap Page

HTML Sitemap
  • Save
Source: WordPress.org

WP Sitemap Page is an easy-to-use plugin that generates sitemaps for humans.

This is the most installed sitemap plugin WordPress users use. Along with this, it’s quite easy to use on WordPress.

Simply create a page and put the shortcode into it, that’s it.

You get an automatically generated sitemap for all your posts and pages. It displays sitemaps for custom post types too. WP Sitemap Page offers you to visualize your sitemaps hierarchically. This is one of the best wp sitemap plugins.

#4. HTML Page Sitemap

HTML Page Sitemap
  • Save
Source: WordPress.org

HTML Page Sitemap is a WordPress Sitemap Plugin that generates visual sitemaps only for pages, not for posts.

So, if you want to have HTML Sitemap pages, then it is for you. Just like others, it is also quite easy to configure.

As it provides you with shortcodes to generate HTML sitemaps for pages. However, you also get options to set id, class, and ordered_list_types.

So, these were 4 Amazing HTML Sitemap Generator plugins. Now, learn how these plugins can give you a better life?

👉 Backlinks Indexer: The Ultimate Guide to Index Backlinks

How HTML Sitemap Generators can make your site better?

Source: Google Webmasters

So, this is what Matt Cutts says about such sitemaps.

But, I’ve some more reasons to support that HTML Sitemaps are still worthy.

Why HTML Sitemaps are necessary?

So far, you have got some idea that how an HTML Sitemap Generator can increase your productivity.

Did you ever think a visitor can turn back if he doesn’t find what he was searching for on your site? Well, there may be some people who say that XML sitemaps are the only sitemaps we should use and visual sitemaps are just a waste.

HTML Sitemap Generator: Insider’s Guide to Visual Sitemaps

So, for those here are some reasons why these sitemaps are necessary for your blog-

Helps in organizing large websites

Suppose you are the owner of an eCommerce website and with time your site got popular and gets more visitors. Now, people will come to your site and are often confused about where they should go for the updated content.

Now, the HTML sitemap comes into action. It is like a map of a city that guides the people where should he go.

Similarly, an HTML sitemap is a map of your website that tells the visitors where they should go in order to get the updated content.

It is a storage of web pages that helps the audience to find out what they didn’t find anywhere else on your site. So, the last solution for them is to look at the HTML Sitemap to find the content.

As an example of sitemaps being used by big companies, you can consider Amazon, eBay, Flipkart, etc. All these companies provide an index for their visitors to easily navigate through the site.

HTML Sitemaps helps in SEO

Why HTML Sitemaps are used for? This is the basic question that most new bloggers ask. So, here is the answer for you guys.

Visual sitemaps work as an assistant in search engine optimization. It makes it easy for web crawlers to crawl the updated content by moving it in the queue.

It basically highlights the content to get crawled by generating an HTML Sitemap and submitting an XML sitemap to Google Search Console.

Though Google bots crawl your website to index the links, in this process they often take some time and do not crawl every page because of the crawling budget. These sitemaps help them crawl the latest content by giving all links to your site on a single page.

If you are serious about getting a high ranking on Google, then you should try using HTML sitemaps and perform keyword rank tracking.

Describes the purpose of the website

Basically, these sitemaps are document-based sitemaps that visualize every webpage. So, for a visitor, it is quite easy to get an idea of what this website is about.

Every link has a text called Anchor Text, it is quite healthy for SEO to have keyword-specific anchor texts.

There is no limit on HTML sitemaps, they can be as big as they should be. The big websites with large user databases have large visual sitemaps of their user pages.

It Increases the visitors to your website

An HTML sitemap generator plays a crucial role in bringing dedicated traffic to your site. Yes, using these HTML Sitemap Generators, we provide clear and easy navigation to our visitors to go through the site.

These sitemaps guide the visitor to research every article that is needed for him. The structured representation of information that builds through these visual sitemaps provides the audience with a user-friendly interface.

Quick Tip

HTML Sitemaps help webmasters to remove duplicate content by providing all webpages in a single place. As the website grows, it becomes difficult to check if the proposed article is already written or not?

Here, it actually helps the webmasters from getting the error of duplicate content.

In a nutshell, HTML Sitemaps improve your blog SEO by providing a beautiful navigational layout to visitors.

Who uses HTML Sitemap Generators?

Basically, these sitemap generators can be used by anyone if he is an amateur blogger or a blogger serious about his website.

It enhances the website architecture and makes it more informative. However, for a web owner of a large website, it is quite a tough job to create a sitemap by hand, so the HTML sitemap generator is a good choice in this case.

Frequently Asked Questions

A sitemap generator basically informs the search engines that the sitemap referring to a particular website has been updated. Thus, whenever web crawlers come to crawl the website, it becomes easy for them to crawl the website and index that.

The above-mentioned plugins help you in creating such sitemaps.

New bloggers often see sitemaps to be the only XML sitemaps. Just like XML sitemaps, there are visual sitemaps that do the same job for visitors as XML sitemaps do for web crawlers.

Simply, they make all the web pages available in a single place, where they are visible to the audience and search bots.

A sitemap is just like a table of contents. XML sitemaps navigate the search crawlers while HTML sitemaps navigate both the audience and web crawlers.

If you all HTML sitemap generators to build an HTML sitemap for your website, then it would be beneficial for you.

Conclusion

I think, now you’ll no longer say that HTML Sitemaps are not worthy.

HTML Sitemap not only impresses visitors but also proves beneficial in search engine optimization.

If you are using WordPress as a blogging platform and don’t use these sitemaps, then I would recommend the above-mentioned HTML Sitemap Plugins to use. You need not do anything technical, most of the tasks these plugins can do themselves.

After generating these sitemaps, don’t forget to put a link to the page on your website, preferably in the footer.

So, these were the 4 Best HTML Sitemap Generators for WordPress. If you haven’t used visual sitemaps for your website, then just try these HTML Sitemap generators for your WordPress site. If you have used any of these, then please share your experience with us.

So, how is the HTML Sitemap Generator plugin?

If you are using some other HTML Sitemap Generator plugins that are worth mentioning in the list, please discuss them in the comments.

👉 If you liked this article, then please share it with others too. These shares motivate me to bring more informative and beneficial stuff regarding Blogging.

Nitin Dabas

About Author

Nitin Dabas is your SEO guide. Expert in keywords, on-page SEO, and link-building, he has boosted rankings for countless clients. Read his blog and join his success stories.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *