Best practice, to link to sitemap index or sitemap post+page list from WMT?

Question

I'm using WordPress and Yoast SEO which creates a main sitemap which links to various other child sitemaps.

e.g

• Main WP sitemap: sitemap_index.xml
  • WP Posts sitemap: post-sitemap.xml
  • WP Pages sitemap: page-sitemap.xml

Should I add all sitemaps to GWT? will this give me better indexing, are there any drawbacks with just adding the Yoast's main sitemap.

Answer 1

I think what you mean to say is a sitemap index file and individual sitemap files instead of main and child sitemap. The details are here:

http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#index

Submitting just the sitemap index file to GWT is sufficient if all the URLs listed in that file refer to every valid sitemap file you want to submit. Keep in mind that Google will download all sitemaps that are advertised in the sitemap index file, so if you can, compress the individual sitemap files so that google doesn't use a lot of bandwidth.

Once submitted, give GWT 10 minutes or so then verify the sitemap page to ensure google detected all the individual sitemap files (a.k.a. child sitemaps) correctly.