Are you looking for a specific page on a website and the main menu isn’t helping? The categories are too broad, the search bar returns vague results, and you end up leaving the site. The sitemap exists to solve exactly this problem: it lists all available pages in a readable structure, like a table of contents in a book.
HTML Sitemap and XML Sitemap: Two Tools, Two Uses
The term “sitemap” actually refers to two distinct things that many visitors confuse. The HTML version is a standard web page, accessible to anyone. It displays an organized list of pages, categorized by sections. This is the one you will most often find in the footer of a site.
The XML version, on the other hand, is not intended for humans. It is a technical file that search engines like Google use to crawl and index pages. You can usually access it by adding /sitemap.xml to the end of a URL, but its raw content is of no interest for daily navigation.
To quickly find information, the HTML sitemap will be useful to you. For example, you can access the Amplement sitemap to get a quick overview of all the pages available on their platform, organized by theme.
Finding the Sitemap on Any Website
Where is this page hiding? The most common convention places the link in the footer, often next to the legal notices or privacy policy. But not all sites follow this convention.
Here are the methods that work on the majority of sites:
- Check the footer: look for a link named “Sitemap,” “Site Map,” or “Navigation” at the very bottom of any page.
- Test the direct URL: add
/sitemapor/site-mapafter the domain name in the address bar. Many WordPress sites or common CMS use these paths by default. - Use the site’s internal search: type “sitemap” in the search bar if the site has one. The page often appears in the top results.
- Go through Google: type
site:example.com sitemapin Google. The search engine frequently indexes this page even when it is not very visible on the site itself.
The footer remains the first place to check, as the vast majority of websites place their utility links there.
Accessibility of the Sitemap: What WCAG 2.2 Changes Concretely
Have you ever clicked on a link in the footer and seen your keyboard focus disappear behind a cookie banner? This is exactly the type of problem that the new accessibility standards target.
Since the publication of WCAG 2.2, the criterion “Focus Not Obscured” requires that the keyboard focus is never hidden by a persistent element (fixed header, chat widget, GDPR banner). For a link to the sitemap placed in the footer, this means that the user navigating by keyboard must clearly see the active element without another block covering it.
Minimum Size of Navigation Targets
WCAG 2.2 also introduces a minimum size criterion for clickable elements at the AA level. Utility links like “sitemap,” “contact,” or “accessibility” must reach a clickable area of at least 24 x 24 CSS pixels, or have sufficient spacing around them.
In practice, this pushes web designers to transform these small text links in the footer into actual buttons. A link that is too small or too close together causes click errors, especially on mobile or for people with motor impairments.
Optimized Navigation: When the Sitemap Replaces the Menu
The main menu of a site is designed for the most common journeys. It displays the main categories and a few sub-sections. But as soon as a site exceeds a few dozen pages, the menu can no longer show everything.
The sitemap then takes over in several concrete situations:
- Searching for a deep page (a page buried three clicks from the menu, such as specific terms and conditions or a product sub-category).
- Understanding the overall architecture of the site before exploring in detail, for example on an institutional site or a service portal.
- Finding a page whose exact name you forgot but whose general theme you know.
The sitemap is a shortcut to the pages that the menu does not display. For websites with several hundred pages, it is often the quickest way to locate specific content.
Impact on Organic SEO
Google treats the two types of sitemaps differently. The XML sitemap helps its bots discover and index new or rarely linked pages. The HTML sitemap, on the other hand, strengthens internal linking by creating direct links to each page from a central point.
A well-structured HTML sitemap distributes “SEO juice” to deep pages that otherwise receive few internal links. It is a simple technical lever that many sites underutilize: the page exists, but it is poorly organized or incomplete.
For both visitors and search engines, the logic remains the same: a page accessible in fewer clicks is more likely to be found, viewed, and indexed. The sitemap reduces this distance between the homepage and any content on the site, benefiting both user navigation and search ranking results.
