Well, a site map is indeed important for a website both from the point of view of the visitors as well as that of search engine optimization. Let us start by exploring its importance in regard to visitors. Visitors come to your site in quest of information which is essential for them. But they are also a very edgy lot and would bounce away if that information is not available on the spot. A site map, if provided, proves quite helpful here as it gives an at-a-glance picture of the structure and lay out of your website to satisfy the first-hand curiosity of the stray visitor, who then proceeds to go through the pages. In other words, a site map is a page that carries the structure of a website for the benefit of the visitor, thus preventing the bounce.

A Site Map Is Also Important For a Website In Regard To SEO

Sometimes people underestimate the importance of site map for Search Engine Optimization, often forgetting the fact that site maps make it convenient for search engines to navigate a website while indexing pages. It may also be relevant to remind these people that when Robot.txt file tells the search engine what not to rank, the site map tells them what to rank. What’s more, they provide instant visibility of the structure and layout of a website, as a result of which search engines can complete their job quickly and efficiently. In addition, site maps are routinely used to let search engines know if there has been any changes to a given website, thus minimizing the risk of indexing errors. Apart from all that, you can reduce your reliance on external links (that direct search engines to your site) substantially, when you submit a sitemap to a search engine. Over and above, they can help with broken internal links or orphaned links.

Sitemap Improves The Overall Effectiveness Of a Site

As people are currently in favors of utilizing their websites for online or internet marketing and are keen on increasing traffic to their sites, tips related to incorporating a site map in this regard are listed below.

Simplifying Navigation

When visitors get lost in a website (happens quite often), groping for a way to reach the page they need, a map of the site obviously helps them a lot.

Conveying The Theme Of The Website

In order to attract more visitors, websites are often crammed with numerous topics; some even unrelated to what the site is all about. A neatly designed site map carrying the central theme of the site becomes quite useful then.

Site Optimization Issue 

When a sitemap contains links to every page in a website, these are all accessed by the search engines through that map and get indexed. This is considered very useful by most SEO agents.

Reorganizing The Relevance

A site map also helps when it comes to restructuring your website and rewriting its contents. This gives a more orderly arrangement to your website, thereby enabling the programmer to access each section specifically and make necessary alterations with ease. Therefore, it becomes quite clear that a map of the site is an essential constituent of any website. It makes the website more user-friendly and easily accessible.

Incidentally, site maps are nothing new. They have been around since the beginning of search engines, but during the past few years, when search algorithms have become more complex, increasing importance has been placed on them. In Introduction to Sitemaps Google has discussed the importance of site maps to its search algorithms in vivid detail.