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.
Exclude Child URLs from XML Sitemap Generator (Wordpress)
-
Hi all,
I was recommended the XML Sitemap Generator for Wordpress by the very helpful Keith Bloemendaal and John Pring - however I can't seem to exclude child URLs.
There is a section Exclude items and a subsection Exclude posts. I have tried inputting the URLs for the pages I don't want in the sitemap, however that didn't work. So I read that you have to include a list of "IDs" - not sure where on earth to find that info, tried the page name and the post= number from the URL, however neither worked.
I hope somebody can point me in the right direction - and apologies, I am a Wordpress novice, and I got no answers from the Wordpress forums so turned right back to SEOmoz!
Cheers.
-
AH! You did it Keith - I thought clicking 'update' at the bottom would do it, but there's a little link hidden in some text at the top saying "rebuild the sitemap manually".
Finally it's done, thanks so much for your help!
Mark
-
Did you try to generate a new sitemap after clicking update options and then submitting it to webmaster tools?
Generally it will only update when you add/delete pages on it's own.
-
I'm just trying to exclude these child URLs from the sitemap - in future I may block them entirely, but I certainly don't want to submit a sitemap with these URLs and then contradict that in robots.txt.
I have used the Post ID numbers to exclude the pages from the sitemap, however they remain in place.
Thanks once again for your assistance and quick responses!
-
It may take some time for it to propagate to Google if that is what you are asking. Are you trying to block the pages/posts completely from search engines?
-
Hi Keith,
Thanks once again for a quick response. I have actually tried that method, however when I check the live sitemap I can still see the pages in my sitemap. Very frustrating! Is it that the sitemap doesn't update live straight away? And just to confirm, I am clicking "Update Options" at the bottom - quite often it'll be something stupid like that!

Thanks,
Mark
-
Great question, and WP really should make this easier!
http://businessaccent.com/2009/06/08/what-is-my-wordpress-post-id-number-and-how-can-i-find-it/ This article explains one way to see it, also if you open up the post/page in the admin panel to edit it you can just look in your browser to see the url which will have the post ID in it... IE: www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=615&action=edit (615 is the post ID)
Hope that helped

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
-
Japanese URL-structured sitemap (pages) not being indexed by Bing Webmaster Tools
Hello everyone, I am facing an issue with the sitemap submission feature in Bing Webmaster Tools for a Japanese language subdirectory domain project. Just to outline the key points: The website is based on a subdirectory URL ( example.com/ja/ ) The Japanese URLs (when pages are published in WordPress) are not being encoded. They are entered in pure Kanji. Google Webmaster Tools, for instance, has no issues reading and indexing the page's URLs in its sitemap submission area (all pages are being indexed). When it comes to Bing Webmaster Tools it's a different story, though. Basically, after the sitemap has been submitted ( example.com/ja/sitemap.xml ), it does report an error that it failed to download this part of the sitemap: "page-sitemap.xml" (basically the sitemap featuring all the sites pages). That means that no URLs have been submitted to Bing either. My apprehension is that Bing Webmaster Tools does not understand the Japanese URLs (or the Kanji for that matter). Therefore, I generally wonder what the correct way is to go on about this. When viewing the sitemap ( example.com/ja/page-sitemap.xml ) in a web browser, though, the Japanese URL's characters are already displayed as encoded. I am not sure if submitting the Kanji style URLs separately is a solution. In Bing Webmaster Tools this can only be done on the root domain level ( example.com ). However, surely there must be a way to make Bing's sitemap submission understand Japanese style sitemaps? Many thanks everyone for any advice!
Technical SEO | | Hermski0 -
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 -
Category URL Pagination where URLs don't change between pages
Hello, I am working on an e-commerce site where there are categories with multiple pages. In order to avoid pagination issues I was thinking of using rel=next and rel=prev and cannonical tags. I noticed a site where the URL doesn't change between pages, so whether you're on page 1,2, or 3 of the same category, the URL doesn't change. Would this be a cleaner way of dealing with pagination?
Technical SEO | | whiteonlySEO0 -
When creating parent and child pages should key words be repeated in url and page title?
We are in the direct mail advertising business: PrintLabelAndMail.com Example: Parent:
Technical SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach
Postcard Direct Mail Children:
Postcard Mailings
Postcard Design
Postcard Samples
Postcard Pricing
Postcard Advantages should "postcard" be repeated in the URL and Page Title? and in this example should each of the 5 children link back directly to the parent or would it be better to "daisy chain" them using each as parent for the next?0 -
Wordpress Pods and Wordpress SEO by Yoast
Hi I am optimising a new site that has been built in Wordpress using Pods. The Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin is not recognising any content on the site - has anyone any ideas on how to get around this - does it matter - is it the plugin that is at fault rahter than the set up of the site?
Technical SEO | | Highlandgael1 -
Should the date be included in news URLs
My website is not a news or magazine site, but we do have a news section updated 2-3 times a week with industry related news. We are working on a new structure for the URLs.
Technical SEO | | theLotter
Should the date be included in the URL? From this article from Google I understand that as long as we submit a news sitemap it doesnt matter whether or not numbers are included in the URL, correct? https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/68323?topic=116650 -
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?
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.
Technical SEO | | askotzko0 -
Trailing Slashes In Url use Canonical Url or 301 Redirect?
I was thinking of using 301 redirects for trailing slahes to no trailing slashes for my urls. EG: www.url.com/page1/ 301 redirect to www.url.com/page1 Already got a redirect for non-www to www already. Just wondering in my case would it be best to continue using htacces for the trailing slash redirect or just go with Canonical URLs?
Technical SEO | | upick-1623910