Does the xml sitemap pass page rank to pages? I have many articles but I don't link to them in my homepage, does having a sitemap xml sufficient to get them all indexed and with page rank?
Not sure what you mean by this so i shall answer as good as i can, A sitemap acts just like any other page in terms of link juice for pagerank a sitemap can be pageranked and it can pass link juice to other pages internally so they may get ranked too. A sitemap helps inform search engines about changes and alterations made to a website therefore speed up the process of indexing.