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Sitemap

A sitemap is the mapping of a website's pages, organising their hierarchy and their links to each other.
It exists in two forms: a functional sitemap used in the design phase to structure the site, and an XML sitemap intended for search engines to help them properly index all pages.

Related Services

UX Research UX/UI Design

Related Terms

Wireframe Userflow UX

Sitemap in practice

Two types of sitemaps

  • Functional sitemap - map of a site's pages, used in design (UX and product) to structure the hierarchy.
  • Sitemap XML - file intended for search engines to help them correctly index all pages.

UX Best Practices

  • Hierarchy consistent with users' mental model.
  • No more than 3 levels of depth on a public-facing website.
  • Test the sitemap using card sorting with 5 to 10 users.

SEO Best Practices

  • Submit thesitemap.xmlin Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
  • Update regularly (generate automatically).
  • Only include canonical and indexable URLs.
  • Split into multiple sitemaps if more than 50,000 URLs.

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