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  4. Submitting multiple sitemaps

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Submitting multiple sitemaps

On-Page Optimization
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  • azguy
    azguy last edited by Jul 19, 2011, 11:23 PM

    I recently moved over from html to wordpress. I have the google sitemap plugin on the new wordpress site, but in webmaster tools, it's only showing 71 pages, and I have hundreds, but many are html.

    Is it okay, to submit an html sitemap as well as the wp sitemap that's already in there?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • CommercePundit
      CommercePundit @john4math last edited by Sep 29, 2011, 9:05 AM Sep 29, 2011, 9:05 AM

      I agree with it. If you want to go with multiple XML site maps so you have to wait after submission.

      I have very good experience with multiple XML site maps.

      I am working on eCommerce website and submitted 24 XML site maps to Google webmaster tools.

      Just look in to multiple XML site maps for Lamps Lighting and More!

      You can see that Google webmaster tools shows very few index URLs.

      I have similar experience for my another eCommerce website where I have submitted 7K+ URLs and 300+ indexed by Google with in 15 days.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • azguy
        azguy @azguy last edited by Jul 21, 2011, 10:18 AM Jul 21, 2011, 10:18 AM

        Can someone help me here?

        I used the sitemap generator, got like 500 plus pages.

        I uploaded it to the root of my server, submitted it a second time to google, and got:

        Parsing error

        We were unable to read your Sitemap. It may contain an entry we are unable to recognize. Please validate your Sitemap before resubmitting.

        I don't know how to fix this**.**

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • azguy
          azguy @john4math last edited by Jul 20, 2011, 4:10 PM Jul 20, 2011, 4:10 PM

          Well, I created a new sitemap using the above; renamed it; uploaded it to server; submitted it to google, and google did not accept saying error.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • azguy
            azguy @ReneReinholdt last edited by Jul 20, 2011, 4:07 PM Jul 20, 2011, 9:11 AM

            I'm not saying the sitemap is html, I'm saying the pages are html. And, that already have one xml sitemap that is autogenerated by the new wordpress platform, but I have a ton of html pages the new sitemap is not picking up.

            So do I just create another one and add all those pages? So then there will be 2 sitemaps.

            Edit: Just ran the sitemap generator. Pretty cool. Now there are some duplicates. So do I need to go in and remove those pages that already show in the first sitemap, or is it okay to have them in both sitemaps?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • ReneReinholdt
              ReneReinholdt last edited by Jul 20, 2011, 5:13 AM Jul 20, 2011, 5:13 AM

              Google does not support html sitemaps and will only crawl them as any other webpage. But you can submit more xml sitemaps both in bing and google. I personally use a program called sitemap generator.

              azguy 1 Reply Last reply Jul 20, 2011, 9:11 AM Reply Quote 0
              • AlanBleiweiss
                AlanBleiweiss @azguy last edited by Jul 20, 2011, 3:40 AM Jul 20, 2011, 3:40 AM

                oh- and add both of them to your robots.txt file or create a sitemapindex.xml file that then lists both, and then just include that index version in the robots.txt file.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • AlanBleiweiss
                  AlanBleiweiss @azguy last edited by Jul 20, 2011, 3:39 AM Jul 20, 2011, 3:39 AM

                  you can create one manually, or use a sitemap generator.  Just be sure to call it something other than the name of your existing WP generated sitemap.xml file - so it could be sitemaphtml.xml or sitemap2.xml

                  They need to be in the XML format as outlined by sitemaps.org to be recognized by Google Webmaster Tools - and also submit both to Bing Webmaster Tools.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • azguy
                    azguy @john4math last edited by Jul 20, 2011, 1:40 AM Jul 20, 2011, 1:40 AM

                    Well, the current sitemap google is recognizing is the wordpress (newer one) that is a .xml.

                    So how can I create an additional one that will show all the html pages, so google can easily find them?

                    AlanBleiweiss azguy 3 Replies Last reply Jul 21, 2011, 10:18 AM Reply Quote 0
                    • john4math
                      john4math last edited by Jul 20, 2011, 1:24 AM Jul 20, 2011, 1:24 AM

                      I'm not sure about your HTML sitemap; I don't think HTML sitemaps are a supported format for you to submit to Google (I don't see them on sitemaps.org).  You just need Google to crawl this page, and all the pages it links to?  There is a plain text format (see here) that is allowed for sitemaps.  You could probably change your HTML sitemap pretty easily to that format.

                      I'm pretty sure you're allowed to submit multiple sitemaps, but I can't find anything concrete saying you can or can't.  The Google Webmaster Tools UI seems to support it, so my guess is that it would be fine.  Try it and see if it works?  You could also create a sitemap index file that references both these sitemaps.

                      You can read more about sitemaps on sitemaps.org.  According to the Google help doc here, they adhere to these standards.

                      azguy CommercePundit 3 Replies Last reply Jul 20, 2011, 4:10 PM Reply Quote 1
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