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    4. Do we need to manually submit a sitemap every time, or can we host it on our site as /sitemap and Google will see & crawl it?

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    Do we need to manually submit a sitemap every time, or can we host it on our site as /sitemap and Google will see & crawl it?

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    • askotzko
      askotzko last edited by

      I realized we don't have a sitemap in place, so we're going to get one built. Once we do, I'll submit it manually to Google via Webmaster tools.

      However, we have a very dynamic site with content constantly being added. Will I need to keep manually re-submitting the sitemap to Google? Or could we have the continually updating sitemap live on our site at /sitemap and the crawlers will just pick it up from there? I noticed this is what SEOmoz does at http://www.seomoz.org/sitemap.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • askotzko
        askotzko @rhutchings last edited by

        Thanks, Ryan. I was confusing those.

        To execute the sitemap index, would I just point the crawlers to the index? Do you have any links to overviews of how to set that up?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • applesofgold
          applesofgold last edited by

          There are also scripts you can purchase for very little cost and have them install it for you on your server and set up a cron job to have your sitemap run automatically each week and ping the search engines to find your sitemap.

          One such service is at xml-sitemaps.com - they can install it for you and set up the cron job as well.

          Just make sure you are on a good server that can handle the script if your website is large.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • rhutchings
            rhutchings last edited by

            I think you may be getting xml sitemaps confused with sitemap pages.  Your xml sitemap should live at /sitemap.xml as Alan pointed out.   The seomoz and other sites that have a /sitemap page is for different purposes.  Its not your xml file, its a "topical guide" to your website and all the major sections of your site.

            Remember that you can also create a xml sitemap index if you need to have different sitemaps (video, news, content) that houses all the different xml sitemaps underneath it.

            askotzko 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • CaseyKluver
              CaseyKluver @askotzko last edited by

              Typically I use /sitemap.xml

              I dont think it matters what you call it, as long as its submitted to Google webmaster tools.

              Check out sitemaps.org for more info on how to create a quality sitemap

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • askotzko
                askotzko last edited by

                Great, thanks!

                Should we also have it live at /sitemap, as SEOmoz does?

                CaseyKluver 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • AlanMosley
                  AlanMosley last edited by

                  Yes they will pick it up, you can put the address in your robots.txt file,

                  http://thatsit.com.au/robots.txt

                  then you dont need to submit it and all search engines will find it.

                  Keeep it up todate, free from 404's, 301's all urls should be status code 200, and keep it accurate. Bing for one will igniore it if it is not clean and acurate, they allow only a couple of percent error rate.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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