We have a static sitemap and a blog...Uh oh!
-
Hi
We have a static sitemap and a blog...Uh oh! We are are just realizing that the 2 are not very compatible!! We need a dynamic sitemap. Is there such a thing as a "set and forget" sitemap that updates itself without us maintaining a database of sitemap data?
Thanks
Andrew
-
You have a very typical case here, Studio33. The usual way to handle multiple sitemaps most efficiently is to create a sitemap index file at the root of the site which would list the locations of the two actual xml sitemaps you have.
Then in both Bing and Google webmaster tools as well as your robots.tx file, you point to the sitemap index file. This way, you're giving the maximum number of signal for where the engines can find your sitemaps. (A sitemap in internal directories may not be found by search engines - they're trained to look for a standard sitemap file in a standard location at the root of your site - no sense making it hard for them!).
Here's Google Webmaster Tools' help doc on making a sitemap index file.
Hope that helps?
Paul
-
As long as the pages are linked you need not have them in the site map.
a sitemap is not even necessary for most sites,but the best way to generate is http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2013/02/20/building-sitemaps-manually-stop-until-you-read-this.aspx
Google has something simuar
-
Cheers problem solved!
Thanks
Andrew
-
1: not sure, but it opens ok. but if you submit to WMTs it would warn you if there is a problem
2: to my knowledge, its ok to have more than 1 sitemap (seen a few places have 2 with no issue)
-
http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/page/feature-table.aspx
Google sitemap Yes
so it already generates a sitemap, you just have to find the link
a bit of googling says ther url is www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.axd (but that was a very old refferance might be different now)
-
Hi Paddy,
Your answer prompted me to dig a little further and I have just found that it already has a dynamic one..under /Blog/sitemap.axd.
This raises 2 more questions for me:
1. what is axd, is it ok to use axd not xml.
2. Can a site have 2 sitemaps. I will have 1 in www.example.com/sitemap.xml and 1 in www.example.com//Blog/sitemap.axd. Is that ok? Anything to be aware of with this set up?
Thanks
Andrew
-
-
what cms are you using? most have sitemaps auto generated, or the there is a plugin available.
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
-
Removing dates from wordpress blog URL
Hi all, Ours is website's blog is built with wordpress. We used to have the below URL pattern like may other websites: www.website.com/blog/2016/04/10/topic-on-how-to-optimise-blog. Recently we removed the date and made the URL pattern to just like: www.website.com/blog/topic-on-how-to-optimise-blog All the links have been generated with new URLs across the blog. Still all the old URLs have been reported as crawl errors in search console. I am wondering will there be any auto redirect formula to redirect all the old URLs to new URLs. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
URL structure change and xml sitemap
At the end of April we changed the url structure of most of our pages and 301 redirected the old pages to the new ones. The xml sitemaps were also updated at that point to reflect the new url structure. Since then Google has not indexed the new urls from our xml sitemaps and I am unsure of why. We are at 4 weeks since the change, so I would have thought they would have indexed the pages by now. Any ideas on what I should check to make sure pages are indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ang0 -
International Sitemaps
Hey Dudes, Quick question about international sitemaps. Basically we have a mix of subfolders, subdirectories, and ccTLDs for our different international/language sites. With this in mind how do you recommend we set up the site map. I'm thinking the best solution would be to move the subfolders and subdirectories onto an index and put the ccTLD site maps on their own root only. domain.ca/sitemap (This would only contain the Canada pages) domain.com, fr.domain.com, domain.com/eu/ (These pages would all have an index on domain.com/sitemap that points to each language/nations index) OR Should all site have a site map under their area. domain.com/sitemap, fr.domain.com/sitemap, domain.com/eu/sitemap, domain.ca/sitemap? I'm very new to international SEO. I know that our current structure probably isn't ideal... but it's what I've inherited. I just want to make sure I get a good foundation going here. So any tips are much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blake.runyon0 -
Total Indexed 1.5M vs 83k submitted by sitemap. What?
We recently took a good look at one of our content site's sitemap and tried to cut out a lot of crap that had gotten in there such as .php, .xml, .htm versions of each page. We also cut out images to put in a separate image sitemap. The sitemap generated 83,000+ URLs for google to crawl (this partially used the Yoast Wordpress plugin to generate) In webmaster tools in the index status section is showing that this site has a total index of 1.5 million. With our sitemap coming back with 83k and google indexing 1.5 million pages, is this a sign of a CMS gone rogue? Is it an indication that we could be pumping out error pages or empty templates, or junk pages that we're cramming into Google's bot? I would love to hear what you guys think. Is this normal? Is this something to be concerned about? Should our total index more closely match our sitemap page count?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoninjaz0 -
Sitemap Dissappearance??
Greetings Mozzers, Doing my standard run through Webmaster tools and I discover up to 30% of my sitemaps no longer exist. Has anyone else experienced the recent loss of sitemaps/can suggest reasons why this may have happened? Re-submitting all sitemaps now but just concerned this might become an on-going issue...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
XML Sitemap Index Percentage (Large Sites)
Hi all I'm wanting to find out from those who have experience dealing with large sites (10s/100s of millions of pages). What's a typical (or highest) percentage of indexed pages vs. submitted pages you've seen? This information can be found in webmaster tools where Google shows you the pages submitted & indexed for each of your sitemap. I'm trying to figure out whether, The average index % out there There is a ceiling (i.e. will never reach 100%) It's possible to improve the indexing percentage further Just to give you some background, sitemap index files (according to schema.org) have been implemented to improve crawl efficiency and I'm wanting to find out other ways to improve this further. I've been thinking about looking at the URL parameters to exclude as there are hundreds (e-commerce site) to help Google improve crawl efficiency and utilise the daily crawl quote more effectively to discover pages that have not been discovered yet. However, I'm not sure yet whether this is the best path to take or I'm just flogging a dead horse if there is such a ceiling or if I'm already at the average ballpark for large sites. Any suggestions/insights would be appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danng0 -
Move blog and keep the seo competence
I have my blog at www.blog.practo.com and wish to shift it to practo.com/blog since from an SEO point of view I dont think having good content on blog.practo.com is going to help. Without having to move the WP instance to /blog can I have all my urls directing as www.practo.com/blog/articles and still work to update the blog from www.blog.practo.com Is this possible and advisible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shanky10 -
Blog Duplicate Content
Hi, I have a blog, and like most blogs I have various search options (subject matter, author, archive, etc) which produce the same content via different URLs. Should I implement the rel-canonical tag AND the meta robots tag (noindex, follow) on every page of duplicate blog content, or simply choose one or the other? What's best practice? Thanks Mozzers! Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0