A sitemap is usually exceeding what is required in the process of building a website. A
sitemap lists the pages of a website accessible to users and web crawlers. At a glance, it
shows the entirety of a website which is more like a architectural view of the whole setup.

A sitemap can either be a document in any form used as a planning tool for Web design
or a single page that lists all the individual pages on a website, organized hierarchically.
There are two popular versions of a sitemap:

XML: This gives the search engines a view of all pages in a website, how they are
related, their importance and how often they are updated. It does not need to be seen by
users.

HTML: This is designed to help users find contents on the site at the same time search
engine bots easily find pages and index them.
By highlighting the importance of having a well structured sitemap, webmasters will be
able to create their own sitemap to suit their needs.

- Navigation
A sitemap literally acts as an architectural view of a website. It helps visitors find their
way back when lost in between thousands of pages on the site. They can always refer to
the sitemap to see where they are and navigate through with ease.

- Site's theme at a glance.
A user gets the idea of what the whole website is about in a matter of seconds. Reading
through the whole pages of the website would not be necessary as there is no need to get
the "big picture". This save the user a lot of time.

- Search Engine Optimization
When a sitemap is created using any of the two popular versions listed, search engine
bots easily have a glance of all links/pages a site consists of. It makes it very easy for
the bots to index a website and list them on search engines. It is also for this purpose
that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your
website.

- Organization and relevance
A sitemap enables you to have a complete acute view of your site's structure, and
whenever there is need to add new pages or new sections, the existing hierarchy can
easily be reverted back to. As a result, a perfectly organized site sorted according to
relevance.

- Website's quality
A quality website drives quality traffic. A sitemap improves the quality of a website as
users will be happy to come back. As the number of websites on the internet increases
everyday, it is important to get "loyal" visitors.

* It is very important to know that Google , Bing, Yahoo and Ask use the
same protocol, so having a sitemap lets the four biggest search
engines have the updated page information of a website.

From the reasons listed above, it is important to implement a sitemap. This way, a website
will be easily accessible and organized for users and web crawlers.

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