Sitemaps – worth it?

• https://seo-hacker.com/sitemap-effects-seo-tutorial/
• https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/search-engine-tools-and-services
• https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2048706/the-site-map-gateway-optimization

It’s worth very much.
Just go to WordPress SEO by Yoast (SEO tab) -> XML Sitemap (wp-admin/admin.php?page=wpseo_xml) then enable and customize options.

Here I agree with odie2. Either Yoast or Google XML Sitemaps plugin.

– Sean

Thanks, odie2 and Sean! I’ve read a few more articles and threads on this and it seems people are pretty 50/50 on whether or not it’s a good idea to do one. Our site is a city-guide and we utilize a menu bar (which helps with navigation) but most people come to our site via individual posts we share on our Facebook page and then click around based on the suggested pages we include in each post. Since we’re constantly posting new content as well as event listings we have thousands of pages and I’m not sure if users would find this tool useful or if it would just be something to do for the Googlebots. We do use Google Analytics, so is that enough info for Google to use in terms of crawling/indexing our site? If we’ve grown this much without one perhaps we don’t need it after all, how much would it hurt to not have one?

Since you will enable it, it will be automatically updated with every new page/post.
Also – if I am not wrong about certain feature (maybe it’s in another way in Yoast SEO) – it will ping common search engines that you added new content, so it will be faster available in them, even instantly.

Google Analytics is something different, just for track traffic.

You could use it or not, your decision.
Sitemaps are mainly for not directly humans (however it could be alternative navigation), but for robots and programs – it’s easier for them index every content.

Imagine that certain page is not linked from another indexed page, so it’s not indexed, because any anchor points to that URL. Sitemap points.

I think we’ll go ahead and do it! Thanks, odie2!