Is a site map really needed!

[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!

[TheFriend]

Is a site map really needed?
Yes, if you use sitemaps you will improve your search engine ranking.
Visit these websites, they will help you.

http://www.free-seo-news.com/newsletter73.htm
http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp
http://www.google.com/support/webmas...n&answer=34654

[encodex123]

Yes, sitemap is very important. Most of the time for any changes just submit ur sitemap to google and all ur changes will be indexed by google.

[acwebguru]

Yes, sitemap.xml is needed. You can create your sitemap from www.xml-sitemaps.com.

[markz08]

Sitemap is very important especially if your site is new. it helps spiders easily crawl and find your pages. there are tools on the net where in you can create Sitemaps for free. same as posted above.

[John Scott]

Sitemaps are not necessary. We don't use one and we do fine in the SERPs.

[businessservicesuk]

No one can really say for sure how useful on-site/Google sitemaps are.

You could say that about other aspects of SEO

Unique well written tags
Good content
Anchor texting
etc etc

However sites that perform well tend to be the ones that concentrate on all aspects of SEO. The site owners that simply chase PR, these tend to fair well over the short term before disapearing for good.

My advice is simple, everything should be important for a non established sites.

[TheFriend]

John Scott: Can you say me what this means?
By my signature: [CaRP] XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line 24

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by TheFriend

John Scott: Can you say me what this means?
By my signature: [CaRP] XML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line 24

That's not your signature. That is CARP not being able to parse your blog feed.

[encodex123]

Thanks John for correcting. So, it means most of us have incomplete information
regarding sitemap.

<links removed>

[Red Dog]

Originally Posted by TheFriend

Is a site map really needed?
Yes, if you use sitemaps you will improve your search engine ranking.
Visit these websites, they will help you.

http://www.free-seo-news.com/newsletter73.htm
http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp
http://www.google.com/support/webmas...n&answer=34654

I doubt that sitemaps improve SE. Sitemaps are simple tools that help the search bots index a site better and understand the importance of a page, the frequency of changes and so on.

Sitemaps are particularly useful for large sites, but I know enough websites ranking more than well in the SE without using them, including V7.

[t.analiza011885]

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!

hmmm. for the users sitemap is important...it is easier for them to find the specific links/topics they want to find to your site...
for the search engine, sitemap is also useful for faster index, a big help also in classifying your site content..

[potchie]

most common site, used site map, to easy crawled and index their page at the same time about ranking, i think it help, but its still the master on how their skills optimizing their site.. so for John Scott, his belief and experience was one true.

[coolguy27]

Originally Posted by TheFriend

Is a site map really needed?
Yes, if you use sitemaps you will improve your search engine ranking.
Visit these websites, they will help you.

http://www.free-seo-news.com/newsletter73.htm
http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp
http://www.google.com/support/webmas...n&answer=34654

You mean if you have sitemap it will improve your SERPs? Hmmm..

If your site was built correctly, i.e., it's crawler-friendly, you certainly don't need a Google Sitemap. It won't hurt you to have one, and you may be interested in Google's other Webmaster Central Tools, but having a Sitemap isn't going to get you ranked better....

[businessservicesuk]

Exactly Cool Guy, me I like to do everything even the stuff that may have little relevance today. Simply because no one knows what will be in tomorrow.

And having things like on-site/google sitemaps are only a 2min job

[morph]

a quality sitemaps really helps a lot especially for a very large site with many sub pages on it.. it not only helps your site to be spider-friendly but it also helps your visitor to navigate your site easily..beside, theres no harm on using sitemaps,just do it correctly..^^ thats why theres Google Sitemaps and a lot more that helps you creating one.

[eshop600]

There is a diference between a normal sitemap(html) that will be shown on your site to help users navigate and a google sitemap(xml).

I use google sitemap so I can see how google has indexed my site, i`m under no illusion that this will NOT increase traffic. Lucky for me that my cms system produces the xml for google so it always has the latest info in the xml file.

[mit]

Well, if you see the Google Webmaster Guidelines in Design and content part, it says in the 2nd point - "Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages."

[x3mario]

Sitemap can really help but for other SEO specialist it is not necessary anymore as long as you do your part to improve your site SERP.

[Johan007]

I am starting to lose interest in forums due to silly misinformation! Here are the real facts about sitemaps...

Sitemaps have nothing to do with ranking, never have and never ever will because obviously is not an indicator of quality or relevance!

Sitemaps will however enable your pages to be indexed quicker however these pages may not been assigned any page rank or more recently page rank seems to be guessed based on internal links until a proper link analysis is carried out.