For the starter, an XML Sitemap helps web crawlers in properly indexing all the pages of your website.  It even takes web crawlers to the pages, which otherwise is not accessible by the search engine’s normal crawling process. There are certain content types, which require an XML Sitemap’s assistance to get noticed by the search engines. Creating and submitting an XML Sitemap is must if:

1. Some or all the contents of your website are dynamic.

2. Your website contains Flash contents, which by nature is not penetrable by any search bots. Hence, the content remains hidden from the eyes of Google and other search engines.

3. Your website has AJAX content, which is as impenetrable as is Flash content.

4. Your website has very few interconnected links. The web crawler moves from one page to another page following the links present on each of the pages. Hence, the website with poor interconnected links will be largely inaccessible to search engines bots. In situation like this, an XML Sitemap comes handy.

5. Your website has audio or video content.

6. Your website has an archive of unconnected or badly interlinked pages.

You can also use an XML Sitemap to inform the search engines about the frequency with which the content of your website changes. It also carries information about the date when the content was last modified. An XML Sitemap can be used to inform search engines about the importance of each page in the website as well. Although, a standard Sitemap works for most of the pages, you should consider creating and submitting specialized Sitemaps for the pages that has video, audio, mobile, and news contents. Creating a specialized sitemaps like geo sitemaps and code search sitemaps should also be considered.