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XML Sitemaps: The Most Overrated SEO Tactic Ever

Went Hot: June 19, 2008 - 1:47 pm
Posted By: MattMcGee 381 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.smallbusinesssem.com)
Category: SEO

Whenever I take part in a Site Review session at some conference, one of my fellow panelists will inevitably tell a webmaster something like, "You don’t have an XML sitemap. Create one and submit it to the search engines as soon as you can." But I believe that XML sitemaps are the most overrated SEO tactic ever. Here's why.

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from wrttnwrd 381 days ago #

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MOST overrated EVER? What about spamming the keyword tag? :)

Just kidding. Great article!

from scottclark 381 days ago #

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When I originally posted about this, I named it "bondo" for site design errors. I linked...You should see a trackback.

from SEOhack 381 days ago #

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this is great, matt. i'm glad to see the tide turning on the xml sitemap religion.

out of curiosity, have you considered re-adding the xml sitemap to your friends blog to see if it kills google traffic again? not that your friend woiuld be all that keen on the idea . . . . :)

from MattMcGee 381 days ago #

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Thx guys. Hack - never, no way, no how.

from Lid 381 days ago #

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Something I could never quite understand the point of; XML sitemaps - thanks for a really great explanation!

from 1witness 381 days ago #

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Matt,

Good read! In my opinion an XML sitemap is helpful for dynamic websites, since the page info is called on the fly, crawlers have a hard time reading these pages, and an XML assists in this "a tad".
Your other points are valid though for a static site....

from stymiee 381 days ago #

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Anyone who says recommends using an XML sitemap as an SEO technique needs to learn about SEO themselves! Still, I'm glad someone came out and said this. Now if only people would listen....

from hugoguzman 381 days ago #

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This gets my vote for article of the month. Thanks for outing XML sitemaps as a faux SEO technique!

from tykeblog 380 days ago #

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Google was supposed to be opening it up as a method of 'two way' communication with webmasters.

I've lost over 80% of my traffic on one of my sites and I've not received a peep.