The Real Worth of Sitemap

Among many other techniques and tools, Sitemap is said to be a very effective tool for Google ranking. As its name tells us, Sitemap represents a map of a website's page and link structure. Generally speaking, it's a way to tell Google about pages on a website that Google might not otherwise discover. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on a website, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process.

Sounds Cool, Uh? Yeah, I agree. However, does it mean that Sitemap is so important that one can't afford to go without it? Not really. Let's say how Google says about the function of Sitemaps:

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Sitemaps are particularly helpful if:

    * Your site has dynamic content.
    * Your site has pages that aren't easily discovered by Googlebot during the crawl process—for example, pages featuring rich AJAX or images.
    * Your site is new and has few links to it. (Googlebot crawls the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn't well linked, it may be hard for us to discover it.)
    * Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.

Google doesn't guarantee that we'll crawl or index all of your URLs. For example, we won't crawl or index image URLs contained in your Sitemap. However, we use the data in your Sitemap to learn about your site's structure, which will allow us to improve our crawler schedule and do a better job crawling your site in the future. In most cases, webmasters will benefit from Sitemap submission, and in no case will you be penalized for it.

You can also use a Sitemap to provide additional information about your site, such as the date it was last updated, and how often you expect the page to change.
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The basic meaning of the above paragraphs is that, Sitemap, as an effective webmaster tool, will certainly add value to your website in terms of help Google crawl your website in a better way. However, it doesn't necessarily follow that your rank in Google will be different with and without Sitemap. The only difference may be that your website, especially the new ones, will be indexed by Google a lot faster with Sitemap submitted to Google.

Arriving here, I bet you have a clearer understanding of the role Sitemap plays in your website promotion process. No doubt Sitemap can have a positive impact on your website. I'm just saying that you don't need to overemphasize its role, let alone pay a good amount of money to purchase Sitemap generating service from somewhere. Even if you still deem Sitemap critical to your business, I guess it's better you get it from Google Webmaster Center for free.