The blog’s site map page is not just a simple XML sitemap intended for bots. It is a fully-fledged navigation interface, subject to specific accessibility constraints and internal linking logics that condition both user experience and crawling. We will detail the technical points that make the difference between a useful site map page and a decorative one.
WCAG 2.2 Compliance and Blog Site Map: AA Criteria to Follow
The site map serves a normative function often overlooked in articles about blog navigation. Since the official release of WCAG 2.2 on October 5, 2023, criterion 2.4.5 Multiple Ways (level AA) requires providing more than one means of access to each piece of content. The structured site map is explicitly recognized as one of these means, alongside internal search and breadcrumbs.
In practical terms, a blog that only has a main menu and a search bar without an accessible site map risks failing to meet AA compliance. We recommend treating this page as an accessibility component, not as a secondary SEO gadget.
Criterion 2.4.8 Location (level AAA) recognizes breadcrumbs as a standard technique for locating a page within the hierarchy. The structure of your site map must accurately reflect the actual hierarchy of the blog, including categories and subcategories. A discrepancy between the structure displayed in the site map and that of the breadcrumbs creates an inconsistency that penalizes users of screen readers.
For users of assistive technologies, the site map also functions as a bypass for repetitive navigation blocks (header, sidebars, menus). It allows users to jump directly to the desired section or category without going through all the recurring elements. A blog that has structured the site map of Maman Modeuse illustrates this approach: categories are listed with their child articles in a readable hierarchical order for screen readers.
HTML Structure of the Site Map: Semantic Tags and Landmarks
An effective site map relies on strict semantic markup. We observe too many site maps generated automatically by WordPress plugins that produce flat lists without hierarchy, or worse, link tables without ARIA landmarks.
The minimal skeleton of a high-performing blog site map relies on these elements:
- A <nav> element with an explicit aria-label (for example, “Site Map”) so that screen readers can immediately identify the navigation area
- Nested lists <ul> / <li> that reproduce the category-article hierarchy, never flattened <div>
- Links with descriptive anchor text that reflects the actual title of the article, not a generic “Read more” that violates WCAG 2.4.4 Link Purpose
- A <h2> heading for each main category to structure the page into scannable sections
On WordPress, the most common HTML sitemap plugins (WP Sitemap Page, Simple Sitemap) generate a flat list by default. You need to explicitly set the hierarchical display and check in the source code that the lists are properly nested.
Pagination and Volume of Articles
A blog that exceeds several hundred articles cannot display all its content on a single site map without degrading loading time and readability. Two approaches work.
The first is to list only the categories and subcategories with a link to the archive page of each category. The second segments the site map itself by category, with internal anchors at the top of the page that allow jumping to the desired section. Internal anchors replace traditional pagination and keep the site map as a single entry point.
Internal Linking from the Site Map: Real SEO Impact on Crawling
The site map distributes internal PageRank to each listed URL. On a WordPress blog with a classic structure (home, categories, articles), the site map creates a direct crawl path from a depth 1 page to any article, regardless of its age or position in the archives.
This depth shortcut is particularly useful for older articles that have disappeared from the first pages of categories. Without a site map, an article published two years ago can end up four or five clicks away from the homepage, which reduces its crawl frequency by search engines.
Difference Between XML Sitemap and HTML Site Map
The XML sitemap is for bots, while the HTML site map is for visitors and bots simultaneously. Google uses the XML sitemap to discover URLs, but the HTML site map conveys real link juice through standard <a> tags. Both are complementary, not interchangeable.
A common pitfall is disabling the HTML site map thinking that the XML sitemap is sufficient. The result: loss of an alternative access method (non-compliance with WCAG 2.4.5) and removal of an internal linking node that fed deep pages.
Categories, Tags, and Taxonomies: What the Site Map Should Display
The question of scope is technical. Should tags be included in the site map, or only categories? We recommend excluding tags in most cases. WordPress tags create archive pages that often duplicate category content. Including them in the site map dilutes internal linking instead of strengthening it.
The site map should reflect the main categories and their associated articles, possibly static pages (about, contact, legal notices). Items to exclude:
- Tag pages, unless your SEO strategy explicitly relies on high-search-volume tags
- Author pages on a single-author blog (duplicate content with the homepage)
- Internal search result pages and URLs with parameters
On a multi-author blog, author pages can appear in a dedicated section of the site map, provided that each author page contains unique content (bio, selection of articles).
The site map of a blog remains a living document. Each new article published must automatically appear in the correct category. A properly configured WordPress plugin manages this update, but we regularly find site maps that have been stagnant for months because the page cache has not been purged after publication. Ensure that your caching solution excludes the site map or purges it with each new publication.
