Is it really a bad idea to publish a sitemap for your blog?
I have a blog and am considering posting a sitemap that will include an index page, an archives page, and an entry for each individual blog post. Is this really a bad idea? Is this a good (or helpful) idea? I am particularly interested in the element <changefreq>
: I edit posts from time to time, and while this is not common, I don’t want to set a particularly rare change rate that prevents search engines like Google from indexing changes. (The Sitemaps protocol says that search engines may crawl pages more often, but don't have more details on the matter.)
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It is almost always a good idea to publish an XML sitemap.
You can leave the changeFreq element and accept the default if your web host can handle a reasonable crawl rate from search engines. If you have already scanned, you should have noticed any problems.
Add your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools and you can check for any crawl issues, inaccessible pages, 404s, etc. Very useful.
The only reasons I can think of not adding an XML sitemap is because your site contains a lot of duplicate content, broken links, blank or hacked pages. Fix these issues first, then submit your sitemap.
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I have websites with a site and sites without a sitemap. I don't see any real difference in SEO. Google seems to figure out the optimal frequency regardless of changeFreq, so it almost doesn't matter. There is an option in Google Webmaster Tools for visiting crawler sites. When I use a sitemap (Wordpress Plugin), I use the default settings for changeFreq, which is: daily for blog posts and blog posts. weekly - for categories, static pages. always for the home page.
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I use XML sitemaps in all of my blogs. If you are using Wordpress, this plugin does all the work for you: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
It will generate new sitemaps every time you post or update a post.
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