When XML sitemaps is worth the effort

The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. XML sitemaps is not free, and pretending otherwise leads to bad decisions.

Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

When it is worth it

A sitemap helps crawlers find pages links do not reach well. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

When it is not

If nothing downstream depends on it and nobody is complaining, it can wait. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here.

How to decide

Keep it current or it works against you. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

How to tell if yours is fine

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
• Keep it current or it works against you — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.