Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Is there a suggested limit to the amount of links on a sitemap?
-
Currently, I have an error on my moz dashboard indicating there are too many links on one of my pages. That page is the sitemap. It was my understanding all internal pages should be linked to the sitemap.
Can any mozzers help clarify the best practice here?
Thanks,
Clayton
-
Your html sitemap is best for website visitors, so best practice is to list the most important sections/pages. Google can use your html sitemap page to crawl the rest of your site as long as the structure can be followed.
If you have lots of pages, then it's best to us an xml sitemap to submit through Google Webmaster. Once your xml sitemap is in the root directory of your website, you can also let search engines know its location through your robots.txt file like this:
User-agent: * Sitemap: http://www.SomeDomain.com/sitemap.xml
If your site changes over time, it's a good idea to create fresh sitemaps - just set reminders for yourself in a calendar.
-
That makes sense. Thanks.
-
Thanks for the help BrewSEO, Darin, and Zora.
-
I believe he is referring to an actual site map html page, not an XML file to submit to Google.
-
Don't worry about it. The "too many links" message is based on Google's suggestion to have less than 100 links per-page. Obviously site-maps are going to be an exception to this rule, and with good reason. You are fine.
-
The answer is "technically" 50,000.
However, the size for sitemap matters too (no bigger than 50MB).
If you have more than these numbers allow for in Google's Guidelines then you break them up and have multiple sitemaps on your site.
Here is Google's Guidelines on Sitemaps:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=183668
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
If I'm using a compressed sitemap (sitemap.xml.gz) that's the URL that gets submitted to webmaster tools, correct?
I just want to verify that if a compressed sitemap file is being used, then the URL that gets submitted to Google, Bing, etc and the URL that's used in the robots.txt indicates that it's a compressed file. For example, "sitemap.xml.gz" -- thanks!
Technical SEO | | jgresalfi0 -
Desktop & Mobile XML Sitemap Submitted But Only Desktop Sitemap Indexed On Google Search Console
Hi! The Problem We have submitted to GSC a sitemap index. Within that index there are 4 XML Sitemaps. Including one for the desktop site and one for the mobile site. The desktop sitemap has 3300 URLs, of which Google has indexed (according to GSC) 3,000 (approx). The mobile sitemap has 1,000 URLs of which Google has indexed 74 of them. The pages are crawlable, the site structure is logical. And performing a Landing Page URL search (showing only Google/Organic source/medium) on Google Analytics I can see that hundreds of those mobile URLs are being landed on. A search on mobile for a longtail keyword from a (randomly selected) page shows a result in the SERPs for the mobile page that judging by GSC has not been indexed. Could this be because we have recently added rel=alternate tags on our desktop pages (and of course corresponding canonical ones on mobile). Would Google then 'not index' rel=alternate page versions? Thanks for any input on this one. PmHmG
Technical SEO | | AlisonMills0 -
Referencing links in Articles and Blogs
Hi I am wondering if the <sup>tag in html is picked up by google as a reference point?</sup> I.e when you put a superscript in word it puts a small number next to your sentence. Then you have a list of reference at the end of the blog/article does google recognise this?
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Should we nofollow footer social links?
Like most sites today we have a whole raft of social links in our footer, these are on every page of the site and link out to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc Should these links be nofollow to avoid juice leaving our site or would you recommend allowing them to be followed to increase the power of these social sites? Is there a definitive Yay or Na on these social links?
Technical SEO | | Twist3600 -
Robots.txt and Multiple Sitemaps
Hello, I have a hopefully simple question but I wanted to ask to get a "second opinion" on what to do in this situation. I am working on a clients robots.txt and we have multiple sitemaps. Using yoast I have my sitemap_index.xml and I also have a sitemap-image.xml I do put them in google and bing by hand but wanted to have it added into the robots.txt for insurance. So my question is, when having multiple sitemaps called out on a robots.txt file does it matter if one is before the other? From my reading it looks like you can have multiple sitemaps called out, but I wasn't sure the best practice when writing it up in the file. Example: User-agent: * Disallow: Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/ Sitemap: http://sitename.com/sitemap_index.xml Sitemap: http://sitename.com/sitemap-image.xml Thanks a ton for the feedback, I really appreciate it! :) J
Technical SEO | | allstatetransmission0 -
Should I include tags in sitemap?
Hello All, I was wondering if you should include tags and categories in your sitemap. In the past on previous blogs I have always left tags and categories out. The reason for this is a good friend of mine who has been doing SEO for a long time and inhouse always told me that this would result in duplicate content. I thought that it would be a great idea to get some input from the SEOmoz community as this obviously has a big affect on your blog and the number of pages indexed. Any help would be great. Thanks, Luke Hutchinson.
Technical SEO | | LukeHutchinson1 -
Can you have a /sitemap.xml and /sitemap.html on the same site?
Thanks in advance for any responses; we really appreciate the expertise of the SEOmoz community! My question: Since the file extensions are different, can a site have both a /sitemap.xml and /sitemap.html both siting at the root domain? For example, we've already put the html sitemap in place here: https://www.pioneermilitaryloans.com/sitemap Now, we're considering adding an XML sitemap. I know standard practice is to load it at the root (www.example.com/sitemap.xml), but am wondering if this will cause conflicts. I've been unable to find this topic addressed anywhere, or any real-life examples of sites currently doing this. What do you think?
Technical SEO | | PioneerServices0 -
How to generate a visual sitemap using sitemap.xml
Are there any tools (online preferably) which will take a sitemap.xml file and generate a visual site map? Seems like an obvious thing to do, but can't find any simple tools for this?
Technical SEO | | k3nn3dy30