Friday, January 6, 2012

XML Sitemaps and SEO ( Don't help ) Don't Use XML SITEMAPS

Very odd situation happened with 2 websites when i created 2 sitemaps for both websites. I have been an SEO person to never create a sitemap or use them period. Then I an itch and it said to create two xml sitemaps for 2 different websites. After uploading them to there website directory that was in correlation with the sitemap I then went into Google WebMaster Tools and added the sitemaps for both websites. Less than 2 days later very highly ranked keywords literally dropped from page 1 with over 30 keywords being on page 1 of google to page 2, 3, 4, 29, etc i assume you get the picture. This was for both websites all the other websites I left alone and they are perfectly fine with never having used or implemented a sitemap so it leads to be believe from first hand experience that it's a bad idea to use an xml sitemap. Now I am sure that hundreds of people can argue back and forth about this and that is ok. I just think personally that I wont be utilizing an XML Sitemap again...this one change and only change has costed me hundreds of dollars losted over the past 3 days of my ranking dropping.

Now I can say that it did index more pages faster even though google would have gotten around to it within 3-7 days instead of 1 or 2, but to preserve my high ranking I am more than willing to wait.

I added the xml sitemap on January 2, 2012 and on January 4, 2012 page 1 many rankings/keywords disappeared by the 5th only dropped further back I have since deleted the sitemaps from the web dirs and removed them from google web master tools.

To find out more you can go check this out..
Tucson Internet Marketing

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