Should I create a sitemap file and, if so, what should I add to it?

Question

I submitted my website/app to Bing and Google recently. I subsequently received this email from bing:

Dear Webmaster, This is a weekly report on the open issues categories we have detected on your site. http://example.com/ Sitemaps 1 Please visit the Bing Webmaster Tools at your convenience for detailed information. Thanks, Bing Webmaster Team To unsubscribe or change the frequency of this message, please visit the Bing Webmaster Tools to update your preference.

As it is a one-page site (I do dynamically open external pages, but that's not the same thing), I didn't think a SiteMap would make much sense in my case - after all, 100% of the weight would go to the only page of mine that the user sees, namely default.cshtml

Following the link they proved above, I see:

Submit a sitemap for example.com Site: http://example.com/ Date: 9/15/2013 Priority: Normal You haven't submitted a sitemap or it has been a while since you submitted one. You can submit sitemaps in in many formats using the Sitemaps tool. Creating and submitting sitemaps is easy. Learn more. Thanks, The Bing Webmaster Team

The info there says that I could submit (among other options):

Text (a plain text file containing one URL per line)

Would doing so be potentially beneficial for me, or would it be a waste of time, being that I only have the one page? The data I would like them to index (that contains things users might search for, such as the names of movies, books, music, artists, authors, etc.) are in .json files and ancillary .cshtml files (whose contents are loaded dynamically based on user actions, namely making selections from "combo boxes."

So the above-mentioned text file would contains entries such as www.example.com/Content/pulitzers2.json and www.example.com/getHugos.cshtml? Does anybody know would that be the type of entry to add to the sitemap file?

UPDATE

I reckon my sitemap.xml maybe should be like so, including .json and .cshtml files that contain data that I want indexed, IOW data that would be included in people's search strings:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
-<urlset xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 
http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>http://www.awardwinnersonly.com</loc>
<lastmod>2013-09-16</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.awardwinnersonly.com/getHugos.cshtml</loc>
<lastmod>2013-09-16</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>.7</priority>
<loc>http://www.awardwinnersonly.com/Content/pulitzers2.json</loc>
<lastmod>2013-09-16</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>.7</priority>
<loc>http://www.awardwinnersonly.com/Content/nba.json</loc>
<lastmod>2013-09-16</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>.7</priority>
. . .
<loc>http://www.awardwinnersonly.com/Content/goldenglobes.json</loc>
<lastmod>2013-09-16</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>.7</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

However, I am open to constructive criticism / an attitude adjustment regarding what is good and not good to place in a sitemap.xml.

UPDATE 2

So, based on DisgruntledGoat's comment "That's not kludgy or amateurish, most web sites work like that...", I wonder if my best bet, SEO and performance-wise, would be to change my code like so:

$.getJSON('Content/noba.json', function (data) {
            $.each(data, function (i, dataPoint) {
    . . .

$.getJSON('getHugos.cshtml', function (data) {
            $.each(data, function (i, dataPoint) {
    . . .

...to storing the html in .htm files and then doing this:

$('#booksContent').Load('nobaScreenful.htm');
$('#booksContent').Load('noba.htm');

...by loading just a screenful first, it would be snappy; then replacing that screenful with the "whole enchilada" might take place without the user even noticing anything. Now I've got The Cream's "That screen, that screen, that screen-ful" playing in my head).

Would adding "noba.htm" (and all the other htm files) to my Sitemap cause that html to be parsed, indexed, and its contents included in search results? I assume the robots/spiders are smart enough to ignore html tags and concentrate on the content within them...

Answer 1

First up, you definitely shouldn't put JSON files is a sitemap as they are meaningless to a search engine, which wants web pages. It wouldn't make sense for a user to land on your /Content/goldenglobes.json file.

So if the site stays exactly as it is, then a sitemap provides zero benefit.

However, if you are loading in content with JavaScript you may wish to look at Crawlable JavaScript, which would allow your separate blocks on content to appear on URLs differing by the 'anchor' (the stuff after #). In this case you would benefit from a sitemap with URLs like example.com/#!page=goldenglobes