Is a site map really needed!

[interwebhunt]

Site maps I find to be helpful for indexing primarily, which in the long run is always beneficial. For the amount of time it takes to create a sitemap, you might as well do it, spend 5 or 10 minutes and put one up - but I wouldn't concentrate solely on it.

[tzd]

Think about it this way. Sitemaps are not a necessity. BUT because you want to rank best for the keywords you are targeting, you want to create a website with all SEO Elements you know ring true. Theoretically, the more seo elements you have in place, all things being equal, you will out rank a similar website that has less SEO Elements in place. Right?

If, however, this other website has a ton of relevant links coming in and you don’t, who cares about the sitemap, they will outrank you regardless if you have a sitemap or not.

The moral of the story is: Include all SEO Elements you are capable of implementing because the more you have, the better you are... and don’t forget about them darn links...

[coolguy27]

Originally Posted by samlauren1

Yes, Site maps are important. It makes available your page to crawler to be easily indexed. From this you will get good in page rank.

What are you talking about? Where did you get this idea?

Page Rank? How can a sitemap have to do with the pagerank?

[tzd]

xml sitemap does not equal increase in PR.
lots of inbound links = increase in PR.

[skysoldier]

Originally Posted by tzd

xml sitemap does not equal increase in PR.
lots of inbound links = increase in PR.

Lots of quality inbound links and outbound links = increase in PR

[tzd]

true.

[swiftmed]

a sitemap is not essential but it does help to tell search engines exactly what pages you have got just incase they miss one or two. its not always nessasary to have one directly linked on your site, but you could use an XML sitemap and upload that to your google or yahoo account. i personally use the latter method

[harsha22]

Sitemap is ery important. I generally use xmlsitemaps website to create the sitemaps.

[Bender]

You should use the Google webmaster tools.
a sitemap is by no means *required*, but it helps, and you need all the extra you can get for free :-)

[skysoldier]

On my opinion, sitemaps are not required but may help in terms of managing a site easier.

[Rankenstein]

I wouldn't say a Google sitemap is important but a regular old-fashioned sitemap is good for SEO. I treat them a bit like the SERPs - a line of description with the link, keywords in the anchor text. An optimised sitemap can absolutely rip-up the longtail results. I've done some sitemaps that rank very well for hundreds of phrases like that. It's all about divvying up your product e.g.:

Suppose you have a database of widgets for sale, where you can pinpoint 'starting geographic location', and 'distance from' variables. You can then pinpoint Littleton, a suburb of Bigtown City in the state of Utopia, select the distance variable to range not more than one mile away from the start point, put a link with your selected variables on the sitemap. That's one link of your sitemap. Now do the same for every suburb of Bigtown City. OK, you've done your links for your page about Widgets for Sale in Bigtown City, Utopia.

Above each link you have, for example, Widgets For Sale In Bigtown, B12 (the postcode for the area), the anchor text is Used Widgets in Littleton, Smallroute, Miniville and Hugeton, which is the area covered by the postcode B12. And so on. Mix the text up.

Make as many of these as you need for each region. Link to each one from your homepage using roughly the same anchor text as the title of the page you're linking to.

This is SEO gold, people.

[searchbliss]

Sitemaps help bots, not ranking.

[Rankenstein]

Sitemaps help ranking and bots.

[businessservicesuk]

Rank, I cannot believe that

In Googles webmaster guidelines it states having a site-map should be incorporated when optimizing a site for Google, yet many in here state they are not necessary, I go with them, Google does not have a clue, sitemaps are rubbish and a waste of time.

Thanks for the mail, I am currently working on the project and will discuss it at a later stage

[Rankenstein]

I think they are talking about Google sitemaps....I agree they aren't necessary, don't help you rank well, and you needn't bother at all with Google sitemaps.

I'm talking about good old fashioned sitemaps, not the xml variety. Trouble is, people tend to just put links on a sitemap - a line of explanatory text with a keyword or two makes all the difference.

I know, because I've done it, many times, and I know it still works now. So, I can say for a cast-iron fact that everyone who says sitemaps don't help with ranking are wrong. As I explain above, for example, a sitemap can help open up a dynamic database by introducing static routes into it. Any page can rank for something - I'd like to ask why people here think a sitemap is an exception?

[redeemer_spawn]

Based for my reading Site map can improve SEO of a site by making sure that all the pages can be found. This is especially important if a site uses Macromedia Flash or JavaScript menus that do not include HTML links.

[t.analiza011885]

so far...a lot of here saying yes and no...
well i don't know which one is correct..
for the users Yes this is important i guess..

[businessservicesuk]

Ask yourself this question

Is it going to harm?

The answer is no

So ignore the people who say you don't need one, you will find most don't have them on account they have no idea how to upload one.

[nscases]

Originally Posted by Ckrismoney

I don't have a site map because I cant figure out how to do it.

Is it really important, and if so can i pay someone to help me with it?
Thanks for your help!

We don't have a sitemap on our page, and I have wondered the same thing, is it hurting us not to have one? Our site isn't perfect but we seem to be doing pretty well in the rankings for our keywords, especially having a site that is less than a year old due to our site being built (mostly) correctly and building links and having relevant content. But like other people have said on here, it wouldn't hurt us to have a sitemap.

[John Scott]

Great discussion folks, and especially from Rankenstein.