Does Your Site and/or Blog Need a Sitemap?

December 11th, 2007 | 14 comments

Some people use Sitemaps, while others don’t, including myself. When it comes down to it, it doesn’t hurt to have one, but do you really NEED one? The answer, in most cases, is no.

First you have to realize what the purposes of a sitemap are:

1. User experience – Although I very rarely use a sitemap to navigate a site, some people say that they do, so I suppose it could be good for user experience.
2. SE spiders – Sitemaps are a great way to show the SE spiders where your main pages are, so they can dig deeper into your “money pages.”

Then you have to realize the different types:

1. HTML – This is just a normal, static page which links to your main pages.
2. XML – This is a special page that uses XML code to outline different URL’s on your site/blog.

Then you have to understand how to use them:

1. HTML – Just link your “sitemap.html” page to as many of your sites pages as you like.
2. XML – Most major SE’s accept XML sitemap submissions. For instance, you can login to your Google Webmaster Tools account and submit an XML sitemap to Google. There is also a new program over at Sitemaps.org where you can submit XML sitemaps in “one fail swoop” to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others.

Then you have to understand WHEN you need to use them:

1. From a users standpoint – If you believe your users would be using your sitemap to navigate your site, then by all means, use them. However, if they are, you may want to work on the navigation of your site/blog because your users shouldn’t need to use a sitemap to find pages on your site/blog.

2. From an SEO standpoint – Are your pages getting indexed? If so, don’t use them! If not, use them!

If you’re updating your blog on a fairly regular basis, chances are it’s getting indexed pretty frequently and if this is the case you really have no reason to use a sitemap. You should have a good internal linking structure anyway for a good user experience and good flow of authority throughout your site.

However, it is also possible to run a site that is updated TOO frequently, such as an article directory.

In conclusion, there are two instances where you would need a sitemap in my opinion:

1. A content site, such as an article directory, that publishes so much content that the spiders can’t keep up.
2. A site that runs a unique internal linking structure, which relies on the sitemap for proper flow of “link juice,” such as the main directory of this site.

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14 comments

Satellite TV Guru
11th December, 2007 at 5:41 pm

You may be right about not needing one. I put one up on a site that was getting an average of only 40 visitors per day thinking it might help. It actually seemed to hurt me. I’m now getting about 8 visitors per day! grrr
RT Cunningham (6 comments.)
11th December, 2007 at 9:52 pm

There are two plugins for the Google Sitemaps, for WordPress, that I know of. Either one should be sufficient to help the spiders index a site. A visual sitemap, IMHO, is not necessary if you use archives, categories and tag pages efficiently. That is, unlesss you’re using it to combine two or three.
Scott Miller (1 comments.)
13th December, 2007 at 12:54 pm

Thanks for the info Josh,

Searched Google for a relevant post ion this topic after doing a little research and finding out that Google had only indexed 6 pages on my blog. Yikes!

I just took for granted that my pages were getting indexed and obviously that isn’t the case. Chances are it’s happening to a lot of us and you’ll never know unless you check.

Based on what you recommended we’ll give the XML version a shot. By the way like the clean look of your blog, something else you have done that I need to work on.

Appreciate your time and your information
Stephen Cronin (34 comments.)
14th December, 2007 at 7:13 am

Josh,

interesting concept about not needing a sitemap for the search engines. Your logic seems sound: if the search engine knows your site exists and you have a good internal linking structure, it should be able to find all your content without one.

However, I’m not going to disable mine! There’s probably a little more to it. For example a sitemap lets you request how often the bot / spider should crawl your pages.

For me, although I can see your logic, I think if the search engines want the site map (and they seem to), then we should give it to them. Why make it more difficult for them to find your work?
Terry Heath (12 comments.)
15th December, 2007 at 3:05 am

Hi Josh,

The blog looks great. Funny, but I just wrote about sitemaps today on one of my blogs (Coffeeblogger). In the process, I learned you don’t have to submit your sitemap.xml to Google anymore. They can automatically detect it if you have a robots.txt file in place.

Terry
Josh Spaulding
15th December, 2007 at 11:06 am

@ Satellite – The only way I could see a sitemap “hurting” you would be if you included several URL’s that contained duplicate content and/or other pages that would for whatever reason hurt your rankings.

@ RT – I agree

@ Scott – Thanks and good luck!

@ Stephen – There’s nothing wrong with having one as long as you don’t have dupe pages or other pages that shouldn’t be indexed included in your sitemap. I’m just saying they’re worthless if your internal linking structure is set up how it should be Actually, the major players don’t look at the frequency requests. They’re smart enough to figure out on their own when a page needs updated. Matt Cutts talked about it at one point in time. I wish I could post a link, but I honestly have no idea where I saw that (it was a while ago.)

@ Terry – Thanks Terry. Thanks for setting it up for me all those month ago when I hardly knew what a blog was

I’ve heard that you can just point it out in robots.txt Probably should have added that in here, but since I don’t send a sitemap to Google (or any SE) I didn’t think much of it.

btw, I use Lucia’s Link Love to dofollow comments, so after 3 comments you’ll have link juice.
Terry Heath (12 comments.)
15th December, 2007 at 3:55 pm

Thanks Josh,

I think it’s important to remember each page is indexed on an individual basis. As each post is around long enough, it will get its own PR and Alexa ranking. As you said, duplicate content is one of the things that can hurt you, and so can the quality of your links. So with that in mind those who drop in PR by might be dropping because their main page is linked to so many pages with a low PR (their own posts!).

Hmm. I think I’m going to write something about this. lol

Terry
Josh Spaulding
15th December, 2007 at 4:05 pm

Terry, that’s true, but there’s one thing missing. That’s the fact that there’s a big difference between toolbar PR and the actual PR or authority assigned to each page. Most of the blogs/sites that have been “penalized” have simply lost toolbar PR and not any actual authority.

That being said, the loss of toolbar PR wouldn’t affect anything at all (other than advertising rates.)

However, if a page loses actual PR (authority) it would indeed affect the rankings site-wide.
Terry Heath (12 comments.)
15th December, 2007 at 4:12 pm

Good point, Josh. I didn’t realize there was a difference between toolbar and actual PR. I have noticed my site with higher toolbar PR does seem to get more comments (probably people looking for backlinks from higher PR sites), and if someone does pay per post, then I think toolbar PR would count . . . but I’m taking this thread off topic. Sorry!

Great original post.
Maurice (TheCaymanHost) (63 comments.)
17th December, 2007 at 5:13 am

Hi Josh

Thanks for linking the new directory.

I think that for those running a WP blog on a domain and nothing else, a sitemap is probably not necessary, although as RT points out, using a plugin won’t do any damage and always made me feel more comfortable – logical or not.

I’ve found that since I started using a free sitemap service, I’ve done a little better with the other SE’s although that could purely be coincidence of course. Either way, the maps are updated regularly and automatically uploaded to my server, so keeping them is not a hassle and, as you say, with the directory online, they might be a little more important now.
Josh Spaulding
27th December, 2007 at 12:01 am

Hey Mo, a little belated, sorry about that.

Valid points. I do submit XML sitemaps for my article directories and I believe they have contributed alot to the indexed pages within.

Article Directories and other CMS’s that are similar will benefit more than anything from sitemaps.
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10th January, 2008 at 2:27 pm

[...] of your WordPress blog, supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo. Some say you do and some say you don’t need [...]
John (1 comments.)
21st February, 2008 at 11:51 pm

I am not sure whether there is an advantage of using site maps especially for blogs, but most people seem to think it is better to have one. I really can’t say one way or the other.
Josh Spaulding
22nd February, 2008 at 4:19 pm

Hi John,

If everyone else jumped off a bridge would you? lol Just kidding

Seriously though, A-listers and “guru’s” don’t always make the right decisions. When an a-listers makes a poor decision or a guess, thousands of others see that and do the same thing.

So now people see “everyone” doing it and think they should too.

Also, some things word for some sites, and other things work or others.

Testing is your best best! As far as sitemaps go though, this post should give you a pretty good idea through my own testing.