Do XML Site Maps Help SEO?
This blog entry was posted on July 10, 2008.
There is a split in the SEO community on the importance of submitting a sitemap to Google for an optimized website. XML sitemaps do help websites that have structural navigation and “crawlability” problems.
Some in the SEO world (myself included) feel that we want to apply every advantage possible to a website. Others will focus on fixing the structural issues and allow the crawling to happen naturally. While an XML sitemap will not directly improve search rankings it does allow search engines such as Google to see any SEO based changes more quickly.
XML site maps have replaced the older method of submitting your URL to search engines. Now we submit a sitemap directly to the search engine, or wait for search engines spiders to find it.
Types of Sitemaps
Websites now use two types of sitemaps, one visible to users and one for the search engine crawlers. An HTML sitemap is what your website visitors use to navigate your website. An XML sitemap helps the search engines find out what pages are present and which have recently changed, and to crawl your site accordingly.
What is included in a XML sitemap?
- A complete list of all page URLs on your site.
- How often each page is expected to change.
- Date each page was last modified.
- Relative importance of each page in your site.
When to use XML sitemaps
- On large dynamic sites that are poorly linked making them difficult to index.
- On sites using large amounts of Flash of Ajax where the web crawlers have difficulty accessing the content.
- For poorly coded websites with major W3C code validation issues.
- On any site you want to have changes more quickly indexed by search engines.
Although XML sitemaps don’t directly affect SEO results, they do communicate important information to the search engines that aids in indexing. We recommend including XML sitemaps as part of your SEO program.
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