SEO and the “Modern” Sitemap

One of the best design resources for web designers. We love this blog! Modern Sitemap and Footer Back in the old days, almost every website had a sitemap where they listed out all the pages. The purpose of the sitemap is to help visitors and search engine spiders to find information on the site. Now, a lot of modern websites have dropped the sitemap page, instead they place the sitemap in the footer area. I’m going to review 20 websites (from big corporation to small portfolio sites) who organized their footer cleverly to enhance usability.

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Benefits of Placing a Sitemap in the Footer

  • Engage user click and visit duration: As you may know, online readers don’t read everything on the page, they scroll and scan. Footer is probably the last place they look at before exiting. Placing a sitemap in the footer may attract readers’ attention and increase page clicks and views.
  • Make sure your visitors are not missing out: Sometimes your visitors might be too lazy to click on the sitemap link or miss it all together, having a sitemap in the footer can ensure your visitors are aware of every page.
  • Use your footer to promote links: You don’t really have to use the footer to list out everything, you can use it as an alternative location to promote important pages.
  • Save readers’ time: Having a sitemap in the footer allows users to quickly jump from page to page.
  • You save the visitors a click: By placing the sitemap in the footer rather than a separate page, you save the visitors a click.
  • Enhance layout design: Don’t know what to put in the footer? Perhaps a sitemap can fill up the page and make your site look bigger.