Sitemap

A site map, sometimes written "sitemap," is an overview of the pages within a website. Site maps of smaller sites may include every page of the website, while site maps of larger sites often only include pages for major categories and subcategories of the website. While site maps can be organized in a variety of ways, most use an outline form, with pages arranged by topic. This gives visitors a good overall picture of how the site is organized and clearly defines all the resources the website has to offer.

While a properly designed website should allow visitors to navigate the entire site without using the site map, incorporating a site map gives users another means of locating pages. For this reason, each page listed in a site map is typically linked to the page it represents. This allows visitors to quickly jump to any section of a website listed in the site map.

Published: 2008