Sitemaps

[14Steve14]

Do people use sitemaps on their websites for customers to use, or is there no need in this modern day and age.

I have xml sitemaps but not a sitemap page on the site as was wondering whether its worth bothering with.

[heatherbell]

wondering whether its worth bothering with.

We wondered about the same question and although opinions vary, most information I have read gives the same answers i.e.
If you already have an xml sitemap submitted to search engines, an additional sitemap page will do nothing extra for SEO.
If it is thought that a sitemap page is necessary for site users then that does imply that your current navigation and on-site links are not user friendly or are inadequate.
It is always worth checking out 'big brand' websites who usually employ a development team to keep a website up to date and it is noteworthy that sitemap pages are rarely used by them, probably because they have spent a lot of time making their navigation and on-site links user friendly.
So, worth bothering? Probably not but that said, if you have a script that generates and continually updates a sitemap page, why not? As long as it is continually updated (otherwise it will only serve to annoy users), it does no harm.

[14Steve14]

Thanks @heatherbell

It was something that a customer was looking for. He wanted a simple way of seeing what categories were available, and what extra help pages were on the website. The help pages was quickly sorted as there is a link in the header to a page with all those page links. I a horizontal category menu on the site, but it only shows the next level of categories in the drop down, which for many is enough.

I have also read lots online and there seems to be two trains of thought. One is that they offer no benefit for SEO whilst many say the opposite. The second is that they help customers find products, but its not that hard to find them anyway if you know where to look. Its those that don't know where to look that a sitemap may benefit.

Seeing as the site has been live since November and he is the first to ask, for now I will leave it I think, but make a note to look into it later.

[heatherbell]

horizontal category menu on the site, but it only shows the next level of categories

Yes, we have had similar issues. However, we have esoteric products and users trying to find what category contains "that thing that does this" will always be an issue
We have given careful consideration to the naming of cats and sub-cats to make navigation/browsing more intuitive but certainly there's an element of user browsing that should be encouraged. We do not have a search facility on our main site for that reason, encouraging users to explore. Of course, it's a balance of making the browsing journey interesting but not frustrating.
The Advert Manager can be usefully employed to create adverts for sub-sub-cats on index which might help or create interest.
We also still have an old 'price list page' addon. This lists every product with cat, sub-cat and sub-sub-cat headings all on one (very long) page. It broke years ago when we moved from 2.3 to Gold so it was removed but we had customer requests to reinstate it (which we did) which does indicate that some users like to browse that way or perhaps have just become used to browsing that way and do not want to change.

[lecarlb]

I agree with @heatherbell about sitemaps not having much impact on SEO. Most big brands have abandoned it. I believe they're using internal linking schemes to show relationships amongst categories and amongst products. I've also noticed that big brands are just putting all products in top-tier categories and using a filtration system (by brand, by size, by gender etc.).

Beginning with the index page, they show popular categories and popular products. Frank from OSC sent me those modules in 2017 so they will need to be updated for Phoenix. I can send the code for whomever care to take a glance. Also, I noticed featured, suggested, discounted and bestselling products.

On category pages, they list the sub-categories with the most popular products. Here I believe linking top-tier or all categories via previous/next buttons or using a related categories function such as in Header Tags SEO.

On product pages, Phoenix has much of that covered. The usual bestsellers, also purchased, recently viewed etc.

Currently, Phoenix's link structure is Index page => Cat. 1 => Cat. 2 => Product page. Nothing is linked horizontally. So we must figure out a system to get products to network with products and categories to network with categories and ultimately linking back to the index page. On one site, I have over over 40,000 internal links to the index page but only 3 internal links to product pages and those are canonical.

Breadcrumbs are mainly for SERP displays and I'm not sure how dropdowns in menus impact SEO. These are just my observations.

[lecarlb]

After more research, I can now conclude that a lot of big retailers such as Walmart, Fanatics, Macy's etc. use html sitemaps. This is sort of a retraction from my comment above. So obviously there's some SEO benefit but more importantly it's a benefit to visitors.

Some SEO practitioners say an html sitemap can also help search engines find all of your links because all of your links are in one place and can be crawled or followed easier. Others may argue that search engines discover all of your links via the xml site. However, discover isn't the same as crawled.

The html sitemaps are simple in their presentation. Just parent categories with a list of the of the top level of subcategories. There is a fairly up-to-date addon from OSC that does this. It may need some updating. I have it but not installed.