Summary
Sitemaps come in many different forms. Often, using HTML Sitemaps with Sitemaps created around XML Sitemaps Protocol is the ideal choice. HTML Sitemaps address the specific needs of your website visitors, whereas XML Sitemaps talk directly to search engine spiders. XML Sitemaps offer benefits to webmasters as well as search engines. Webmasters enjoy faster site crawls while search engine spiders get to augment their natural crawls—often discovering new pages not discovered by conventional natural crawls. There are other mutual benefits, including the ability for search engines to provide fresh URLs faster in their search results.
Smaller sites with infrequent site updates can do fine with only HTML Sitemaps. Larger sites carrying thousands of pages will see great value in using XML Sitemap types. With the convergence of search engine support of XML Sitemap Protocol (as defined at Sitemaps.org), using XML Sitemaps makes sense as more and more search engines come on board.
Using mobile, video, and news Sitemaps provides additional opportunities for SEO practitioners to consider. With search engines continuously enhancing their search capabilities with mixed (media-enriched) results, search engines are sending a strong message to site owners to spice up their sites with rich media content.
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