: Where should sitemap be? (not separate sitemap file) Most of the big companies got included sitemap at the bottom of thier site. e.g. Piriform / PCTools. I would like to know if there's reason

@Sarah324

The Sitemap - a quick list of links to all of the pages of your web site - is usually included just before the end of your page because of the way people use web pages.

Whether your visitors are reading an article, browsing photos in a gallery, or scanning through your site looking for something, they will usually take the same approach (if they speak English):


Start at the top of the page
Progress downward, left to right (unless prompted to do otherwise)


Once they have finished reading, browsing, or searching, you've conveniently given them a list of links to other pages on your site that may interest them. It's the same logic for putting the "next" and "prev" links of a paginated article at the bottom of a particular page.

Other languages or cultures that have different reading directions might have a different logical approach to this, based on which direction their text flows.

I imagine that these links are usually above the copyright because that's traditionally at the very end of a document.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Megan663

I think it should be in the footer area under some resources category so that user can find it as resource for the site.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Kristi941

Of all things on the page the copyright is probably the least useful thing to a user. Yes, it's important to have from a legal standpoint, but it's not going to be useful to almost everyone who visits the site since they are there for content, not the copyright notice.

Where you choose to put your sitemap will depend on how you wish your site to appear and be used. If you only have a small set of pages that need to be included in a sitemap, or a small set of "main" pages, then a sitemap in the footer is a good idea as it is very easy for users to find and also has benefits for SEO (think internal linking). If you have a lot of content that needs to be placed into a sitemap then having a dedicated page for it is probably the way to go. If you have a bunch of "main" pages and then a lot of sub-pages beneath them then a combination of footer sitemap and standalone sitemap might be the way to go.

Vote Up Vote Down