Looking towards the importance of search engine optimization it is necessary to make the site search engine friendly as well as easy to navigate for the users. The sitemap in any website fulfills both the purposes. There are two types of sitemap: HTML and XML sitemap. HTML sitemap help the users to navigate easily and XML sitemap is essential for the visibility of a site by search engine crawler. Both are equally important and essential for a site. There are some advantages of Xml sitemap and additional features too which HTML sitemap doesn't have: To crawl all the web pages of a site frequently. Can set the priority for each page to crawl. To make the site crawl for all the search engines. Can allow the spider to track all the pages of the site. It helps the spider in fast indexing. The crawler tracks the updates or changes made in the site immediately. It allows search engine to rank accurately. Ads by Google The xml sitemap is uploaded as a file on the server. It can be created manually or can be downloaded from the sites which allow automatic generation of these kinds of sitemaps. The best way to optimize the site with the sitemap is to submit Xml sitemap in Google Webmaster tool. The only thing to remember is there should not be any broken links and it should be well organized too. The common Syntax of Xml sitemap is:
but what if the menu structure provides enough information about the site structure already, is the sitemap still a must (for search engines)?
a must ? no ! xml sitemaps are usefull right, and very important but you have to focus on other stuff too (like backlinks, metas, page loading speed, etc).
XML sitemaps are important no doubt, but you just cant rely on XML sitemaps. You have to follow a proper white hat SEO techniques to gain higher pagerank and visitors to your site.
are we allowed to submit sitemaps from google sitemap plugin and yoast seo plugin ? Doing this will it have any good or bad impact on the site ?
go to google sitemap , you will get three options to get sitemap for your website ....than u can have a site map for your site
Ofcourse xml- Sitemap is necessary to use in website as it indicates search engine regarding all pages in your site . Might be design of your site is sufficient to indicate pages og \f the site but google gives more weightage to the site which containes optimized Xml-sitemap So rather depends upon design just update the xml-sitemap
Since XML sitemaps (standard,image,video,mobile,news etc.) are usually a very easy thing to add (either with software of plugins) why not do it? Most websites will benefit from it IMO