Have you ever had pages you have created on a website or want to create but are not sure quite how you are going to work it into the site’s internal link structure?
One simple solution is to create an HTML sitemap that can help you spread around your link equity to pages that might otherwise be orphaned.
Note: This is not remotely the same thing as an XML sitemap.
These can especially be useful on sites where you want to create a bunch of location pages for each town around a local business, but it doesn’t make sense to include links to those pages in the navigation menu.
On a larger scale, this is an example of a site doing this for major cities in Canada.
https://www.pcinsurance.ca/en/sitemap/
This site is one of the best ranking websites relating to auto insurance in Canada. You will frequently find them ranking in the top 3-5 for car and auto insurance terms for each of those towns they have listed on the HTML sitemap.
The sitemap is linked to in the footer of their site.
It’s not the only reason they rank well, but it’s a solid example of a site using an HTML sitemap.
Airbnb is another example of a company using HTML sitemaps to spread around link equity, although I think they take it to an extreme.
https://www.airbnb.com/sitemaps/v2
This technique is all about spreading around link equity. The links may not have a lot of relevance, although in the case of how Airbnb does it, there is some anchor relevance there (another reason I would say their method is a bit extreme).
