Web Design and Development
Does Your Website Need A Sitemap?
By Tom Hilton
Recently, a client of ours received an unsolicited email message from a search engine optimization company that was looking to drum up some business. The generic email informed our client that their website was missing a "Google Sitemap file", and that it was in their best interests to get one.
Now, the company was right about one thing; the website did not have a sitemap. But it was wrong in advising our client get one.
So, what is a sitemap? And how do you know if your website needs one?
What is a Sitemap?
In the simplest terms, a sitemap is a list of the pages in a website. And submitting this list of pages to Google or Yahoo enables you to ensure that these search engines know about all of your website’s pages.
Benefits of Creating a Sitemap for Your Website
Sitemaps are often a great way to improve search engine visibility because it enables all pages to be found. With many websites, for example, the navigation is in flash or some other technology, such as AJAX, which makes it difficult or impossible to be crawled via search engines. Sitemaps correct this problem. Additionally, sitemaps are particularly useful for large websites, frequently updated websites, and websites full of archival content, whose pages are hard to reach via links.
But that’s not all. An added benefit of creating a sitemap is the ability to provide additional information about the pages in your website such as:
- the date a page was last modified.
- how often pages change (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly)
- the relative importance of your pages using a parameter called priority.
But not all websites need to have sitemaps.
You Do Not Need A Sitemap If…
- your website is small.
- you don’t update your website.
- all pages are easily reachable via links.
If you are still unsure as to whether you should create a sitemap for your website, visit Google to check how well your website has already been indexed. To do this, enter site:www.example.com in the search field. (Be sure to edit the sample search query to reflect the domain name for your website.) And if you find that Google is indeed missing a significant portion of your website’s pages, it is probably a good idea to build a sitemap.
For more information on sitemaps, visit Google’s Webmasters/Site owner’s help.
Tags: sitemap15 Responses to “Does Your Website Need A Sitemap?”
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I never knew why you really needd a sitemap- or not. I use the feed for my Google sitemap but am confused on it with WordPress. I don’t know how to get it to read more than 10 feeds.
Since by nature blogs are naturally dynamic it seems it would only make sense that you should use a sitemap with a blog.
I always learn such great information from your posts.
@Jen: I don’t know if I understand you correctly, but if you want to display more items in your feed, you can go to Settings -> Reading. Then you can set the number of items in your feed.
And as for a sitemap for blogs, yes, many people think that blogs don’t need them because of the feed. But a feed always has a limit and never shows ALL items. So I do recommend using a sitemap.
And guess what? There’s a handy plugin that will generate one for you. Try Google XML Sitemaps.
Interesting. I was under the assumption that all sites needed a sitemap but it now I see that there are those that don’t. Thanks! (Now I am obsessively checking to see if all my pages are indexed
@Kim: Yeh, well, in your case, I’d probably suggest a sitemap due to size.
But yes, in the case that spawned the article, the website was a simple static website consisting of 7 pages, all of which were indexed and ranked by Google.
Another reason you should not submit your sitemap is that it will help you figure out if your site is having any problem with the structure. See the article from Seomoz here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/expert-advice-on-google-sitemaps-verify-but-dont-submit
@binaryday: Very interesting article. I haven’t heard that theory before.
But if you look at the update on the very bottom, the author has changed his mind and now recommends sitemaps for all websites. He says: “The positives in terms of crawling, indexation and traffic simply outweigh the downsides.”
So, I understand the initial argument, but I think that the best approach would be to use sitemaps and due diligence when evaluating a website.
Do you use a sitemap for your website?
The plugin is definitely a must, right from the setup.
I have a sitemap for my blog.I just followed what big bloggers do. They have a sitemap so do i have. But, I can now justify that sitemap is needed for my blog because it is now bigger than before.
@Dennis: Yes, the sitemap plugin is key. I have a set of plugins which I typically add to new installations, and the sitemap is one of them.
@Nihar: Yes, your blog is large. You absolutely need a sitemap to ensure that Google knows about AND indexes all of your pages. And it’ll let Google know when/if they’re updated.
I have a certain set too! I actually have a post in mind about that as well lol.
I know a lot of bloggers get flustered with “starting plugins” for before the blog even goes live.
Sorry for going OT on ya.
I added a plugin for the sitemap last week. Its the “Google XML Sitemaps” plugin. My pages were already listed but just added it to complement everything.
@Velvet,
I do use a sitemap for my blog however only after asceratining that the posts were getting indexed without it.
I had taken that link out from my seo note. Seems like I had missed the update. Though personally I am still of the view that “do not use sitemap for first 2 months. Ensure that all parts of your site are getting indexed without a sitemap and then only get a sitemap”
@Dennis: Well, the key to a successful blog is proper planning.
@Kurt: At the very least, it might just make Google’s crawling of your site more efficient. For example, they won’t waste time checking pages that aren’t updated and can immediately find any revised pages.
@binaryday: That is a good way to go. In the first couple of months, when a website is small, it should be well indexed on its own, without a sitemap. So the advice is good, but shouldn’t be followed indefinitely.
I am not sure about it but have heard from some one that no matter your site is small or big its advisable to have a sitemap.
Does Google require that you have a site map as part of their policy?