Debunking a SEO Myth about XML Sitemaps
I was just reading Ricardo’s post over on the Diverse Solution blog about XML sitemaps. And I wanted to debunk a myth I’ve heard numerous times from agents across the country about XML sitemaps for everyone reading.
XML sitemaps will NOT help you improve your SEO rankings.
Let me say that again slightly differently.
XML sitemaps are not a tool to boost your SEO rankings.
In fact, this myth is #4 on a list of 36 SEO myths from Chris Smith, Rand Fishkin, and Eric Enge.
Having an XML Sitemap will boost your Google rankings. I just heard this one from a fellow panelist in an SEO session at a conference I presented at within the last month (I won’t mention who, or which show.) This made me cringe, but I bit my lip rather than embarrass and contradict them in front of the audience. Should I have spoken up? Did I do the audience a disservice by leaving this myth unchallenged? I struggled with that. In any event, Google will use your sitemaps file for discovery and potentially as a canonicalization hint if you have duplicate content. It won’t give a URL any more “juice” just because you include it in your sitemaps.xml, even if you assign a high priority level to it.
What’s the next myth you want me to debunk?
Ben Fisher
Posted at 20:17h, 11 MayHey Drew,
Could this cause a negative impact to your SEO if you do not have your sitemaps set up correctly and pages are being crawled that you do not want crawled? I’m currently dealing with this right now actually…
Drew Meyers
Posted at 20:20h, 11 Mayif your pages are not crawled, they won’t get indexed by Google. And
if they are not indexed, then they will not rank at all.
But note that Google crawls links too – so every page that is linked
from your site should theoretically get crawled eventually. You don’t
HAVE to have a sitemap to get crawled.
Sam DeBord, SeattleHome.com
Posted at 02:27h, 13 MayI’m glad that this distraction has been put to bed.
Sam DeBord, SeattleHome.com
Posted at 02:27h, 13 MayI’m glad that this distraction has been put to bed.
SEO
Posted at 22:12h, 13 Maysorry i dont know .
please tell me
MyWebsiteNow
Posted at 11:06h, 14 MayXML sitemap can improve your site rankings especially if you have a
new website. By having the most current version of your site in Google’s index,
this can speed up your ranking in the results pages. professional web design melbourne
martinibuster
Posted at 22:21h, 16 MayNo need to struggle with contradicting a fellow panelist as long as you word it politely in terms that are not absolute. The best way is to preface your comment by saying that there are several points of view on this topic and here is another one….
Of course, never interrupt the speaker. Secondly you can add the disagreement to your own presentation or if you’ve already spoken then slip it in during the Q and A. Thoroughly exploring the topic is in the audience’s best interest. Likely many in the audience who are savvy are in agreement. As someone who has exeperienced this as both an audience member and as a panelist, I feel that allowing a misspoken idea to hang out there may undermine their confidence in all the panelists to those in the audience who are savvy and picked up on the error.
Best,
Roger
martinibuster
Terry, Edmonton Real Estate
Posted at 23:56h, 19 MayThank you for posting this.
Site maps are tools to help search engines more quickly and efficiently find your site’s content. A good sitemap can be helpful, but will not affect your ranking. It will just expose your existing content better.