According to Wikipedia a sitemap is a list of pages of a web site within a domain.
There are three primary kinds of sitemap:
- Sitemaps used during the planning of a website by itsdesigners
- Human-visible listings, typically hierarchical, of the pages on a site
- Structured listings intended forweb crawlers such as search engines
The first step in building a website or reworking a website is to come up with a site map. Right now, I am redesigning a website that has over 22 pages of content and over 85 blogs. All those pages full of gorgeous content will need to transfer over to the new website. So, to figure out what pages exists I created a site map. There are many ways to generate a site map to count your pages or programs that can help you set up a site map.
One way to check page count is open Google, and enter site:sitename.com, obviously replacing ‘sitename.com’ with the website you want to check. Once you click return, the number of indexed pages will be shown on the results page.
Now that you have the page count you can create your site map. Here is a link to 9 best free sitemap generators in 2023 https://markitors.com/best-free-sitemap-generator-tools/.
I use different ones but now I have been using octopus.com. But I did stumble upon this site while writing this blog https://milanote.com/guide/site-map.
I really like how they have structured it out. I love how they take it past step 3 because most site maps stop there.
- Brainstorm website categories
- Organize your categories
- Add structure & hierarchy
- Start planning your content
- Add rough written content
- Add example images
- Sketch the page layout
- Share with your team
If you are struggling with your site map, organizing content on pages or call to actions to keep customers on your web pages look to the geek to help you.