Include pagination in sitemap.xml?

[sichristie]

Curious on peoples thoughts around this.

Since restructuring our site we have seen a massive uplift in pages indexed and organic traffic with our pagination.

But we haven't yet included a sitemap.xml. It's an ancient site that never had one.

1. Given that Google seems to be loving us right now, do we even need a sitemap.xml - aside from the analytical benefis in WM Tools?

2. Would you include pagination URL's (don't worry, we have no duplicate content) in the sitemap.xml?

Cheers.

[AlanBleiweiss]

I wish you the best of outcomes!

[sichristie]

OK thanks Alan. That's good advice. Our rel and next are working brilliantly. As you say we'll implement sitemap.xml with pagination to cover our bases.

Also, we'll be compartimentalising to measure index rates on various categories.

[AlanBleiweiss]

how's the site doing in Bing?  Bing tends to not have such an easy time discovering pages, and I've often found a sitemap.xml file will help - and pagination pages would be included in that file.  If you combine this with using the new rel=next / rel=prev markup Google has been asking for, you have all your big bases covered.