XML sitemaps: the questions we get asked most

Teams tend to reach for this after something has already gone wrong. The questions about XML sitemaps that come up most often on our calls.

Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

Do we need to care about this?

A sitemap helps crawlers find pages links do not reach well. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not.

How do we know it is working?

Keep it current or it works against you. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

The short version

Technical fixes remove obstacles; content earns the position. Both are needed and they are not interchangeable. Three things worth confirming about XML sitemaps before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• A sitemap helps crawlers find pages links do not reach well — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.