Is a Google Sitemap still necessary?

0_00_0

Senior Member

Oct 7, 2010

1,027

494

• Jan 15, 2014

• #21

It is recommended but not necessary. It just helps your content get found. It also helps Google find it faster. I have many websites ranking without them.

 

D

Deleted member 708208

Guest

• Jan 15, 2014

• #22

Yes! You really need to submit your sitemap to Google with their webmaster tools. It is a must.

-RK

 

infoasian

Supreme Member

May 12, 2011

1,419

438

• Jan 15, 2014

• #23

If Google can't find your relevant content without a sitemap it will not pay too much attention to a sitemap. It will rather trigger a red flag to see why content is hidden so deeply that it can't be found without a sitemap. Very rarely does a sitemap do any good for a webmaster, but works in the opposite direction. Sitemaps are just a trap Google lays out to find cheaters.

 

john1444

Elite Member

Jr. VIP

Mar 27, 2012

3,852

1,033

• Jan 15, 2014

• #24

Ofcourse it's optional but ensure you do the needful with the rel and canonical tags..

 

B

bethechange

Newbie

Jan 3, 2014

37

2

• Jan 15, 2014

• #25

Sitemap is still necessary for users who visit your website...

 

xpesos

Elite Member

Jun 16, 2011

1,733

1,152

• Jan 15, 2014

• #26

Only when i started ignoring these things, Sitemap, H1 tags, Meta tags, keyword density and developed my own strategy then istarted ranking my pages

Sometimes i use zero text and still rank pages,

 

ok888

Elite Member

Nov 23, 2010

2,475

682

• Jan 15, 2014

• #27

infoasian said:

I have thousands of websites. None of them ever had a sitemap submitted and they are all indexed. My conclusion: sitemap submissions are a waste of time.

Click to expand...

Thousands? I thought i was balling

 

N

neuroplastic

Junior Member

Mar 10, 2013

104

16

• Jan 15, 2014

• #28

This is a must for a website if you want to rank.

 

The SEO

Elite Member

Jr. VIP

Dec 14, 2011

6,518

3,844

• Jan 15, 2014

• #29

Its not necessary but you always need to add him, it will help you to increase your website indexing rate and traffic. Your web also looks organic and more professional through this.

 

S

screw123

Junior Member

Jr. VIP

Dec 27, 2011

138

28

• Jan 16, 2014

• #30

If you have good internal linking/good breadcrumbs it's not necessary but it can give you a lot of informations for large sites in GWT if you use it in smsrt way.

 

J

Jeff Bezos

Junior Member

Jan 11, 2014

178

82

• Jan 16, 2014

• #31

I love it how you call it a 'Google sitemap'. WTF is a Google sitemap? I've only ever heard of an XML sitemap.

With proper internal linking your site should do fine without one. For the sake of making sure all your pages are crawled, submit an XML sitemap to search engines.

 

WebMeUp

Regular Member

Aug 8, 2012

204

52

• Jan 16, 2014

• #32

Walther said:

Was talking to a friend who mention something about not needed a google sitemap anymore.
Keep in mind the conversation was about getting websites indexed and ranking for keywords ect
Is it still a good idea to use a Google Sitemap?

Click to expand...

Well, in case you have a small website, an .xml sitemap is not really important. Google easily indexes websites that have few pages.

But in case you have a website with a complicated structure and navigation, lots of pages and levels, submitting an .xml sitemap shouldn't be skipped! That will let Google better crawl your website and find & index all its pages.

Another reason for submitting a Sitemap is that by doing that (and using Google?s Webmaster Tools), you can see how Googlebot is indexing your site, how many pages, any problems that might be occurring, and tell it to visit and spider your site more or less often.

Thus you can spot and fix you site problematic areas.