HTML sitemap

It is a page, linked from the site, rendered for people and indexed like any other page.

The XML file is a machine-readable list submitted to search tooling and not meant to be read.

An HTML sitemap creates internal links, which carry context and signal importance. An XML sitemap creates none.

The XML file can list URLs nobody links to; the HTML page is itself the linking.

Having one does not replace having the other, and most sites that need the first already have the second.

When the navigation cannot show every section without becoming unusable, which is the honest threshold.

When content is organised in ways a menu does not express — many categories, deep archives, cross-cutting collections.

When a meaningful share of pages sit several hops from the entry point and there is no hub linking them.

Not when the site has twenty pages and a menu that lists most of them, where the page is a duplicate of the navigation.

Organisation by section with real headings, so it reads as a structure rather than as a list of links.

Coverage of the sections that matter, not an exhaustive dump of every URL — a page listing ten thousand links helps nobody.

Link text that says what each page is, which is where a well-built one adds context the navigation cannot.

A link to it from somewhere consistent, usually the footer, so it is reachable from anywhere.

One of the WCAG success criteria asks for more than one way to locate a page within a site.

A sitemap page is one of the accepted ways of satisfying it, alongside a search function and a navigation menu.

That makes it a genuine consideration on sites where search is absent or weak.

It is not a substitute for a coherent navigation, which every site needs regardless.

A human-readable sitemap page is looked for, and it is explicitly distinguished from the XML file the SEO checks audit.

Its absence is reported as absence, not as a defect, because small sites do not need one.

The navigation and footer are examined separately, since a good navigation is what decides whether the page adds anything.

Depth and orphan measurements are what indicate whether a site is large enough for one to be worth adding.