I don't think there is a seo value added to the sitemap but it helps in faster indexing of your individual pages.
A site map tells search engine crawlers what are all the files you've got on your site. This helps because, with the list, they will know what to look for; but they will not help boost any ranking. A site map is more useful if you submit it to the 4 major search engines: Google, Yahoo!, Ask and Bing.
sitemap is just a route map for search engine spiders so that they read site fully and get back to their index nest. recently there is gossip around video sitemap.
i can say yes ...coz SEO can tell you or make you sure that your website is knowing by the Search Engine like goolge, ask.com, bing and MSN...
A sitemap shows the search engines all the pages of the website in order of priority. If you make add any more pages, the sitemap reflects the change & helps the searchbot in accessing it easily.
As i know MSN is the website that run by Microsoft , Bing is the search engine powered by Microsoft .
It definitely helps with seo in that it helps all of your pages get indexed and to make sure there aren't any orphaned pages.
a sitemap makes google aware of pages it might not have seen initially. i dont think it really has any impact on your site, although i know of somebody who made sites regularly, and noticed a difference in the time taken for a site to be indexed when not using sitemaps. its good practice to do so i think. you can see what keywords people are using to find your site as well if you're using google webmaster tools.
Also, if anything, a visual HTML listing of your site map is a bonus page of relevant content for your site.
Sitemaps helps a lot in seo. It helps the search engines index any new updates or changes on your site...
sitemap don't actually effect seo directly but it tells search engines like google the available link on your website .
I believe there is an SEO value of sitemap and it's for internal linking. As we want backlinks from other sites which is hard to get, there is one simple way to get backlinks instantly..backlinks from your own site and this is through sitemap. Pages pass link juice to each other making them to have a greater chance to rank. Aside from spiders will crawl your pages easily, this is another aid of sitemap for your site.
For me, sitemap does not play an important role to SEO. It only helps in the beginning to get your article/content indexed. After that, it is useless.