SEO: Google Sitemaps not Worth the Effort

In his Oct 2, 2019 blog article, SEO Round Table’s Gary Schwartz has reported that Google’s John Mueller posted on Reddit that he agrees, that HTML sitemaps are not worthwhile for SEO purposes.

See Gary’s article here: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-html-sitemaps-seo-28312.html

I’ve been in SEO for as long as SEO has existed and I’ll agree with John Mueller on this issue.

In my opinion, web site developers should be more focused on simplification of their site’s navigation. If it is simple, it is good for people and for search engine bots.

I’ve spent time and money in the past creating very large site maps using tools like Screaming Frog software to index and create sitemaps of my site. Screaming Frog’s prices eventually increased too much over a couple of years so I stopped using them and briefly considered writing my own tools to do the same thing.

In the end, I used my time to focus on design improvement including a major simplification in the U/I which dramatically reduced the amount of links per page making it easier for people to navigate as well as Google, Bing and Yahoo search engine bots.

Don’t waste your time with sitemaps, use your time more wisely on design improvements.

Author: Rick Cable / AKA Cyber Abyss

A 16 year US Navy Veteran with 25+ years experience in various IT Roles in the US Navy, Startups and Healthcare. Founder of FinditClassifieds.com in 1997 to present and co-founder of Sports Card Collector Software startup, LK2 Software 1999-2002. For last 7 years working as a full-stack developer supporting multiple agile teams and products in a large healthcare organization. Part-time Cyber Researcher, Aspiring Hacker, Lock Picker and OSINT enthusiast.

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