XML SiteMap - Right Away or Delay?

[TheARKlady]

So, I have a new client whose web designer declined to create an XML site map. They said that they would rather wait a year and let Google create one.

I am wondering what the opinion of other SEOMoz members is about this--do you create an XML right away or think there is an advantage in delaying?

Personally, I always prefer to have one right away--What is the best practice in your experience and why?

[TheARKlady]

I hate when I reply and it doesn't post!

Thanks Ryan,

Appreciate your sharing your experience in submission before posts are made. I would not have thought about doing one for subdomains--great insight and suggestion.

The site in question has been up a while and is pretty comprehensive so I thought it would be a good practice. Another site I am working on did not have one either and it will be interesting to see how the XML sitemap added today will impact it.

Thanks again to all of you for chiming in. Very helpful, I just had  not heard of someone declining to create one as a general practice before.

[TheARKlady]

Todd, I appreciate your suggestion about the video site map. That is a great idea that I did not think of!

So, I must confess that I've been remiss about using Webmaster Tools but as my sophistication has increased, I am expanding my use of other tools for a more comprehensive approach.

[TheARKlady]

Thanks Martijn,

I've mainly been an SEO writer until this last year or so and almost exclusively work on small business websites.

I take an initial look at the indexing of the pages on Yahoo, Google and Bing and then monitor it over time. Since I do a lot of work for web designers, my preference for XML sitemaps is just one of practice.

It seems that many small business sites do not include them and I like to work to get them an edge in many different ways. Many have horrible sites that need all the help they can get!

[RyanKent]

Martijn and Todd share some good points. I'll add a different viewpoint. If your site offers solid navigation and no island pages, sitemaps are completely unnecessary.

When you register your site, Google will begin attempting to crawl the main page of the site. If you offer standard, crawlable navigation, then Google will find every page on your site naturally. Sitemaps offer Google and Bing a list of links to your site's pages. If a link is noticed in your sitemap which has not been otherwise crawled, then your sitemap offers an opportunity for search engines to crawl the page.

As for timing, just be sure there is actual content on your site prior to submitting a sitemap. I had once installed forum software on a site and then submitted a sitemap to Google prior to any posts being made. I received a penalty notice and had to submit a reconsideration request to have the site later indexed.

There are only a few cases where I can see the benefit of submitting a sitemap. A couple examples:

• if you add a new sub-domain which is otherwise not linked to by your main site

• if you add an island page to your site which you wish to be indexed

[Gaveltek-173238]

Hola!

google has this to say about submitting sitemaps "Submit a Sitemap to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover." ala Webmaster tools. I stand firmly behind your inkling to create a good standard issue sitemap and submit. Last week we had a client (attorney) who did not have a sitemap at all for the three years her site was up, google had about 22 pages in its index, after sitemap, 432 pages in its index.  Be sure to submit to BIng webmaster tools as well, cover all bases!

so I say create right away, its not going to hurt anything, and can quite honestly help a lot! as a footnote to this answer, if you are using videos, etc... on the site be sure to build a video sitemap as well we have been seeing a lot successful indexing of our clients media.

Hope this helps!

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

For our company/websites we used different methods of submitting our sitemaps, but until now I prefer submitting the XML sitemaps after a couple of weeks/months (it varies with the kind of website). For us this had a couple of reasons, these were the main ones:

• Insights in your ("natural") crawl stats: By waiting a couple of weeks/months with submitting your sitemaps to Google we were able to see the "natural" crawl stats of our websites.
• Analyse the differences: This also applies to the reason I mentioned above. If you wait you are able to see the difference in your crawl stats after submitting your sitemap to Google. You are not definitely sure if this is directly correlated to you submitting your sitemap of course. But at least you could have a look.

But there are sure also reasons for directly submitting a sitemap: you are directly able to segment your urls, so you can see which segments of your website need to be optimized. And the number of pages crawled vs indexed.

I would like to know your own answer to the question. Why do you prefer submitting a XML sitemap right away?