Is there any point in adding a footer link to your xml sitemap? Could it actually hurt your SERPs? I have a domain I recently revamped from a static site to use a CMS and added an xml sitemap for the first time. I linked it in the sitewide footer next to the html sitemap. When I search for some of my posts by "the title wrapped in quotes" the Sitemap comes up in the results, but the actual article page is relegated to the "omitted results" I am wondering if pushing too much juice to the XML sitemap page is resulting in it pushing the articles down. Does anyone else think this might be the case? If it is submitted to G does your XML sitemap need to be linked on the site for any other reason anyway?
I've never linked to my xml sitemap, I've posted a link to the text only archive, but even then I usually disallow it in robots.txt