Published by John Hoff on 06 Aug 2008 at 02:15 pm
Is A Google XML Sitemap Necessary?
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Is it necessary to have one? Will it affect my search engine rankings if I don’t have one? Will Google visit my website less because I don’t have one?
Let me see if I can clarify some of the questions people have when it comes to the widely known, but little understood, xml Sitemaps.
A xml Sitemap is a sitemap generated for your website that you have created for our buddy Googlebot to read and get to know your website.
There are some arguments out there as to whether or not a Sitemap is really beneficial to your website. The obvious advantage of having a Sitemap is to help Google index your site better, but does that really have any say in search engine optimization or PageRank?
Does Having A Sitemap Help My Search Engine Rankings?
It’s a crappy answer, but the answer is yes and no.
Having Googlebot crawl your website - and - getting ranked near the top of searches are two different things.
This means having a xml Sitemap does not necessarily affect your search engine rankings. If your website is well laid out through links, Google (and other search engines) will spider your website just fine; so in this case, the answer is no.
However, if your site is not well laid out for search crawlers to index your site, some of your web pages might not get indexed at all. In this case, if you had a xml Sitemap which filled in that missing page, it would now be indexed and thus have a search ranking.
Does Having A Sitemap Get Google To Spider My Site More Often?
Not as a standard setting, no, but . . .
By submitting a Sitemap and using Google’s Webmaster Tools, you can see how Googlebot is indexing your site, how many pages, any problems that might be occurring, and tell it to visit and spider your site more or less often. Keep in mind that with each visit by Googlebot, some of your bandwidth will be used. This could be an issue if your site is already getting a lot of traffic.
Where Can I Get A XML Sitemap?
There are a number of free Sitemap generators out there, just go to your favorite search engine and type “free xml sitemap” and you’ll be taken to a few sites where you can generate one for free.
Note though that if you have a large website with over 500+ pages, you may have to purchase a generator to index your entire site. If you’re using WordPress, you can download an easy plugin to generate your Sitemap automatically.
Once you have a xml Sitemap generated, upload it to your root directory and then head over to Google’s Webmaster Tools (accounts are free, but you need a username and password) and tell Google where your Sitemap is.
Do you use a Sitemap? Do you think it has added any value to your website?
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Barbara Swafford
on 06 Aug 2008 at 5:06 pm #
Hi John,
I think sitemaps are pretty important. I remember reading so much about them, I finally added one. I’m hoping it helps.
Barbara Swafford’s last blog post..Interview With Lorelle VanFossen - Part 8 - The Future of Blogging
John Hoff
on 06 Aug 2008 at 5:18 pm #
Hello Barbara, thanks for stopping by.
I’m curious, how are you hoping it helps?
If you really think about it, are they really all that important? Your website will be spidered by web crawlers whether you have one or not. Also, a sitemap doesn’t do too much for you SEO-wise unless it catches a page that’s not being crawled for some reason (like a nofollow, problem in the robots.txt file, or broken link).
As an example, our landscape website, Modern Landscape, has no xml sitemap and yet it ranks #1 on Yahoo, Google, Ask, MSN and others when people search for landscape companies in las vegas.
I do believe it’s good to have one still - I mean, Google went to all the trouble of dealing with Sitemaps for a reason. I’m currently writing my next post which is about SEO techniques I use and I do mention not to forget the Sitemap, even if it has limited SEO value.
Nick Savage
on 05 Oct 2008 at 4:31 pm #
Yes I do believe a sitemap is very beneficial even if I am dissagreed with for the most part.
Why do I believe this?
Answer = You get top search queries which help you to modify the site to better suit google, as well you get crawl stats to help you update your site more often, the more you update the more it will be crawled. You get to see errors on your site and fix them.
This is not all but is enough to spend a minute making a sitemap.
Yes i agree with John Hoff also, a google sitemap is important and not important. If you site is well laid out and you are a pro you have nothing to worry about but is you make mistakes and like stats then get a sitemap added, Takes about one minute for a small site and will make most happier.
John Hoff
on 05 Oct 2008 at 7:12 pm #
Hello Nick, thanks for the comment.
Those are good points. The short answer really is, no, you don’t need a sitemap. However, there are benefits they give you. And those sitemap generators are great for finding errors and broken links you might have on your site, like you mentioned.
If someone is on the fence on whether to have one or not, I’d say go for it.
keo
on 21 Oct 2008 at 9:55 pm #
Great post m8, looking forward to more posts like this, so i bookmarked you
John Hoff
on 22 Oct 2008 at 7:17 am #
Thanks keo. I try to keep a good mix between web development and entrepreneurial articles because I think both aspects are important to being a successful web entrepreneur.
See you around.