What are the best HTML and XML sitemap tools?
The simple answer to this is, it depends! It depends on how you are building your Web site.
First, let’s just clarify what we are talking about. An HTML sitemap is a collection of links that help visitors to your site find their way around your site, and can also help a search engine index your site more rapidly (more on that in a moment).
XML sitemaps are xml directories of your site, never seen by the average site visitor. XML sitemaps are used to tell search engines what pages you have on your site; they provide an easy way for the search engines to find your pages. (That doesn’t necessarily mean that the search engines will index them, but that’s another story.)
So, both of these are good things to have on your site. In some cases visitors may actually use your HTML sitemap to find something, but you can also submit the sitemap to the search engines; you can use Google’s Fetch as Google tool to get the search engine to grab the file and index it, and you can use Bing’s Submit URL feature to do the same thing. (In both case, you need to set up a Webmaster account and use the tool; don’t waste your time using a “Submit Your URL” tool outside the Webmaster consoles.) This can give the search engines a head start in indexing your site.
As for the XML sitemap, these can also be submitted (and should be submitted) to the search engines through the Webmaster consoles; you should also use a line in your robots.txt file telling other search engines, where the file is stored.
Now, back to the original question. What is the “best” tool? And that depends. These things are so common and necessary, that most content management systems, such as Wordpress, have utilities you can install. (What is blog software? At the end of the day it’s just a content-management system, software that simplifies the process of building Web pages.)
If you are using Joomla or Drupal, you’ll also find plugins to create these things for you. If you use some form of ecommerce software, you may find them, too.
So, the first place to look for one of these tools is within the resources of the content-management or ecommerce system you are using. If you aren’t using such a system, though, there are always other options. XML-Sitemaps.com, for instance, is a popular tool; you can create sitemaps for free on the site, or pay twenty bucks US to install automated sitemap generation software on your site. There are plenty of other choices, though.
