I have a blog, and I am trying to index the blog posts in a manner quite like SO does. Would this sitemap.xml file act as basically a list and contain all of my blog URLs, or would I have to do something else?
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A short answer is yes, though there's other information contained in sitemaps. However, sitemaps are really a thing of the past and while many apps create them, Google puts a much higher focus on discovering pages via internal links. For more information on sitemaps being outdated read webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/4803/the-sitemap-paradox. You'll be better off spending your time working on your internal links.– TreborCommented Jan 1, 2022 at 0:27
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@Trebor thanks for the information!– divinelemonCommented Jan 1, 2022 at 0:46
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What do you mean index the blog posts in a manner quite like SO does?– Mike CiffoneCommented Jan 4, 2022 at 4:35
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XML sitemaps have almost nothing to do with SEO. They don't help your pages rank better and they rarely get search engines to index pages they wouldn't index anyway. At best sitemaps get search engine crawlers to crawl new pages quickly and give you extra stats in webmaster tools and search console. See The Sitemap Paradox– Stephen Ostermiller ♦Commented Jan 4, 2022 at 9:27
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If you want to have all your pages indexed, you need to improve your information architecture. In other words every page should have links to and from several other pages. That is a big part of why this page has the list of "related" questions .– Stephen Ostermiller ♦Commented Jan 4, 2022 at 9:29
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1 Answer
If you're just running a blog, you really only need an RSS feed. You can go ahead and submit that under the sitemaps tab in Search Console.
You don't need a sitemap unless you've got like 10s of thousands of pages and/or you're an e-commerce site. Most WordPress SEO plugins gen them automatically, so it's not much to provide it just in case.
