How to Easily Add HTML Sitemap Page in WordPress

If you’re looking for building an HTML Sitemap in WordPress, in this article we will show you how you can add an HTML Sitemap page in your WordPress blog/site using Hierarchical HTML Sitemap and WP Sitemap Page WordPress Plugins. HTML Sitemaps is unlike XML Sitemaps that you submit to search engines to index your site.

Difference between HTML Sitemaps and XML Sitemaps

HTML Sitemap is intended to be geared towards your site visitors so it should be in a format that your site visitors are familiar with and the best choice is links list, so HTML Sitemap is basically a page in your site / blog that contains list of your site links including posts, categories, pages and tags or whatever you want to be included in the sitemap. HTML Sitemap also has a great effect on Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

But XML Sitemap is generated to be submitted to Search Engines like Google and Bing so they can index your site content and include it in their search results and Search Engines prefer Extensible Markup Language (XML) so you need to create an XML Sitemap and submit it to Google and Bing Webmaster tools in order to improve your site’s crawling rate.

How to Add HTML Sitemap to WordPress

Add an HTML Sitemap using WP Sitemap Page WordPress Plugin

Currently WP Made Easy uses WP Sitemap Page plugin in our WordPress Archives page to show a list of our site Categories, Pages, and Posts by category. WP Sitemap Page is a free WordPress plugin that allows you add an HTML Sitemap in your WordPress blog/site just by using a shortcode on any of your pages and an HTML Sitemap of your blog categories, posts, and pages will be displayed automatically.

WP Sitemap Page plugin Features

1. The plugin will display a list of all your site categories, pages, and posts by category.
2. You may display a list of Custom Post Type (for example: “Themes”, “plugins”, “WordPress” …)
3. You can customize the way the HTML Sitemap will be displayed through your WordPress admin panel.
4. Also you can exclude some Custom Post Type or some pages from the sitemap.
5. You can change the short code to display one kind of content only by using the attribute only in the shortcode for example to display posts only use only="post" and to display your blog pages only use only="page".
6. WP Sitemap Page plugin displays categories and Posts hierarchically.
7. WP Sitemap Page plugin is available in more than 7 languages including (English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Russian, Persian, Italian, Czech …).
8. You can customize the look of your HTML Sitemap by customizing its CSS class.

To use WP Sitemap Page plugin, you need to download it first and then install the plugin and after that create a new page and paste the shortcode in it and your HTML SiteMap will be displayed.

Add an HTML Sitemap using Hierarchical HTML Sitemap WordPress Plugin

Another good free WordPress plugin to add HTML Sitemaps is Hierarchical HTML Sitemap. This awsome plugin has no settings page and working just after adding the shortcode to any page on your site.

All what you need to do is to download, and install Hierarchical HTML Sitemap plugin, then create a new page and paste this shortcode: [htmlmap showpages] in it and your HTML Sitemap is now working.

The plugin displays shows your blog categories with the number of posts in each category at the top of the page, then displays a list of your blog posts followed by your blog pages.

If you have any thing to add, drop it in a comment below.