Dumb question: if a site doesnt have a sitemap, is it safe to assume they havent done any (on-page) SEO? THX =)
Danna Holland: No.
Lucille Salazar: If your internal link architecture is set properly, there in no absolute need for a sitemap.
Leslie Gardner: Right…yet even if no absolute need for a sitemap exists, any professional SEO would set one up as part of the basics wouldnt they?
Lucille Salazar: Oliver no. If it isnt needed, it isnt needed. Yes, it can help reinforce URL indexing intent. However it is a second tier discovery source except on complex sites (tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of pages with complex link flow)
Ryan Burton: honestly, I like to have them set up as a diagnostic tool much more than for URL discovery. i.e. if you have a ton of URLs indexed that arent in your sitemap, why? They really arent needed for ranking unless a site has serious issues that should be fixed anyway. Having said that, yes, I do usually set them up and submit them in most cases.
Brooke Clayton: Good point, Ryan Burton:.When the no of indexed URL is a lot more than the pages in the sitemap… You know theres something wrong.
Lucille Salazar: Vernard or when you have 25 sitemap XML files with 15,000 URLs each, where some only have 1,000 URLs indexed, it can help narrow down problem file or content type patterns.
Leslie Gardner: mmhhh Maybe I should have phrased that differently. Sorry. Ill try again – if somebody is lacking a sitemap, is it (90%+) safe to assume they havent hired an SEO to do (on-page) SEO for them?…Im wondering whether when Im in a niche where none of the first page results have sitemaps, its a strong indicator that none of them have done any proper SEO and that the niche is not very competitive…? Thanks brother
Danna Holland: Still no.
Nylah Miles: Not at all. Existence ofSitemaps aren’t an indicator of active SEO nor vice versa
Danna Holland: That’s a more explanatory answer yeah 😇
Braxton Hines: No. In some large companies, the SEO is at the mercy of the developers and other demands on their time. I have worked in places where I was asked, will this make us more money than (whatever they were also asked to code)?
Addison Clarke: How do you know they dont have a sitemap? Not all webmasters name it sitemap.xml
Madeleine Estrada: No.A sitemap is a decent aid to page discovery, but, in SEO, if you need the sitemap to do that, youve already lost.Now, a sitemap.xml is certainly useful for the google analytics and reporting tools, but theres a lot of serious SEOs who dont give all their data to Google, and prefer other solutions for their analytics.Sometimes the lack of a sitemap.xml might mean they arent serious about SEO … and sometimes it means they are much better at it than you. 😀
River Chapman: You really don’t need a static sitemap. But there should be an xml sitemap for pages, posts, video
Camilla Sutton: You know what they say… Assumption is the mother of all SEO feckups 🙂 Being more serious though, I wouldnt assume anything from there being no sitemap. Also, remember XML sitemaps can be hosted on a different domain (although youd usually be able to find it in robots.txt ).