Sitemap issues 19 warnings
-
Hi Guys
I seem to be having a lot of sitemap issues.
1. I have 3 top level domains, all with the co.nz sitemap that was submitted
2. I'm in the midst of a site re-design so I'm unsure if I should be updating these now or when the new site goes live (in two weeks)
3. I have 19 warnings from GWT for the co.nz site and they gave me 3 examples looks like 404 errors however I'm not too sure and a bit green on my behalf to find out where the issues are and how to fix them. (it is also showing that 95 pages submitted and only 53 were indexed)
4. I generated recently 2 sitemaps for .com and com.au submitted these both to google and when i create i still see the co.nz sitemap
Would love some guidance around this.
Thanks
-
Glad it was useful!
-
Oh you are a genius yourself Bob Thanks for the great information!
I will look into this and let you know how I go, thanks a bunch you have really helped me move this along and weed out all the confusion!
-
Hi Justin,
In that case I would ask your developer to make the sitemap on the website update automatically (or generate a new one every day). And submit that link to webmaster tools. If he's a real genius he could add your blog pages from Wordpress to this sitemap aswell but I'm not sure if Wordpress has a hook for this.
Alternative options:
- Let him make the automatically updated sitemap for the custom part of the website and use this combined with the sitemap from the yoast plugin. You can upload both separated in Google Webmaster Tools. Make sure both got their own URL. In this case it’s all automated and is just as good as the previous method.
- Keep on updating your sitemap manually. Just make sure you don't use the yoast sitemap and include the blogposts in your sitemap from screaming frog since this would give double input. If you choose to refresh your sitemap manually I would disable the sitemap within the Yoast plugin and use the Screaming frog sitemap which should include your blog pages aswell.
Good luck and let me know if this works for you!
-
Thanks a lot Dirk, your help has been tremendous to my SEO efforts!!!
-
Hi Bob
Thanks alot for your response!
That makes a lot of sense. We use Wordpress only for the blog, but the main site is custom built and doesn't have an yoast plugin.
So I'm not sure how that will work, when I create the site map with screaming frog do I need to include the blog pages in screaming frog if I'm using the yoast plugin?
Thanks again for your help!
-
Yep - you'll have to upload the file to the server first.
Bob's suggestion to generate the sitemap via the Yoast plugin is an excellent idea.
rgds
Dirk
-
Hi Justin,
Thanks for the screenshots. Dirk's suggestion about screaming frog should be really helpful. This should give you an insight in the true 404 errors that a bot can encounter while crawling through your internal site structure.
Based on what I see I think your main problem is the manual updated sitemap. Whenever you change a page, add a new one or mix up some categories those changes won't apply to your sitemap. This creates a 404 error while those pages aren't linked to from your website and (without a sitemap) wouldn't give any 404 error messages in Google Webmaster Tools.
I saw you were using SEO by Yoast already, I suggest using their sitemap functionality. That should resolve the problem and save you work in the future since there is no need to manually update your sitemap again.
Let me know if this works!
-
Hi Justin,
Could you post a screenshot of the error message and any links pointing to this URL? This way we can identify what pages return a 404. If this are important pages on your website I would fix it right now, if it however are pages you don’t use or your visitors rarely see I would make sure you pick this up with the redesign. No point in fixing this now if things will change in the near future. Besides that, sitemaps help you get your website indexed, releasing this two weeks earlier won’t make a big difference for the number of indexed pages since you won’t change your internal link structure and website authority (both help you get more pages indexed).
About your last point, could you provide me with a screenshot of this as well? When I check zenory.com/sitemap.xml I find the .com sitemap, so that part seems fine.
_PS. I would suggest you change your update frequency in your sitemap. It now states monthly, it’s probably a good idea to set this much faster since there is a blog on your website as well. At the moment you are giving Google hints to only crawl your website a few times a month. Keep in mind that you can give different parts of your website a different change frequency. For example, I give pages with user generated content a much higher change frequency then pages we need to update manually. _
-
Hi Justin,
Are the url's going to change when you update the design? If they are not changing you can already update now.
It's not really abnormal to have only a certain % of the sitemap indexed - it could be that Google judges that a certain number of pages is too light in content to be indexed. 55% of url's indexed seems rather low.
Sitemap errors - check the url's that are listed as errors. If I am not mistaken, you use an external tool to generate the sitemaps. It could be that this tools puts all the internal links in the the sitemap; regardless of their status (200, 301, 404) - normally only url's with status 200 should be put in the sitemap. Check the configuration of the tool you use & see if you can only add url's with status 200. Alternatively, you can check the internal linking on your site & make sure that no links exist to 404 pages (Screaming Frog is the tool to use - it can also generate the sitemap).
For the wrong sitemap- as your sites are exact duplicates, probably hosted on the same server, it could be that the .co.nz sitemap overwrites the .com sitemap , as they have the same name. You could rename your sitemap like sitemap_au.xml, sitemap_us.xml & sitemap_nz.xml. This way, if you add a new sitemap for .nz it will not overwrite the .com version. You submit these to Google & you delete the old ones (both on the server & in Google WMT).
Hope this helps.
Dirk
PS. If your design is also changing the url's - don't forget to put redirects in place that lead the old to the new url's.
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
-
Chrome79 shows warning on our domain "Did you mean...?" another website
On Chrome79 a large scary warning is shown to users on our site: "Did you mean this other domain? This site's domain looks similar to X domain. Attackers sometimes mimic sites by making small, hard-to-see changes to the domain." Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/NOGEyLM Our online business is reputable, no black hat SEO practices, has been established since the early 2000s, with a relatively high DA. We don't have any warnings / manual actions in Google Search Console so I can't request a review there. I've reported it several weeks ago to Google's Incorrect Phishing Warning but the warning continues to display. I reported using: google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/ Does the Moz community have any suggestions on how to fix this or general thoughts? Thanks! NOGEyLM
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sb10300 -
"Google chose different canonical than user" Issue Can Anyone help?
Our site https://www.travelyaari.com/ , some page are showing this error ("Google chose different canonical than user") on google webmasters. status message "Excluded from search results". Affected on our route page urls mainly. https://www.travelyaari.com/popular-routes-listing Our canonical tags are fine, rel alternate tags are fine. Can anyone help us regarding why it is happening?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobinJA0 -
Duplicate Content issue in Magento
I am getting duplicate content issue because of the following product URL in my Magento store. http://www.sitename.com/index.php/sports-nutritions/carbohydrates http://www.sitename.com/sports-nutritions/carbohydrates Please can someone guide me on how to solve it. Thanks Guys
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | webteamBlackburn0 -
HELP: What happened to my rankings? No warning from google how to know if i was penalised?
Hi Guys I have just completely a site re-design, I have 3 top level domains. I have no idea whats causing the drop in ranking. I have changed the title tags and meta tags to improve them and make them better, as the last ones weren't really doing us justice. But I see now it has actually dropped our main keyword. I read somewhere that i had to completed **site search **to check and I don't see our home page showing. I was ranking for the keyword: "online psychics" for over 4months at #6 and now is not showing anywhere in the top 50 keywords. I'm also affraid I can not find our other keyword "online psychic readings" which we were ranked #11 seems to have dropped to #44 I have no idea why this would be the case. Our new home page shows a better user experience and also added more content, unqiue content at that - our last design was content thin so I have no idea why we have dropped so much in rankings. The site is also new about 6months new. I have checked WMT and have not received any warnings of any penalties as such, unless it is still coming? Does anyone have any suggestions here? Cheers
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may1 -
Are Links from blogs with person using keyword anchor text a Penguin 2.0 issue?
Hello, I am continuing a complete clean up of a clients link profile and would like to know if Penguin is against links from blogs with the user including keywords as anchor text? So far I have been attempting to get them removed before I go for a disavow. An example would be the work clothing comment at the bottom of: http://www.fashionstyleyou.co.uk/beat-the-caffeine-rush.html/comment-page-1 I am also questioning if we should keep any link directories, so far I have been ruthless, but worry I will be losing a hell of a lot of links. For example I have kept the following: http://www.business-directory-uk.co.uk//clothing.htm Your comments are welcomed!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarzVentures0 -
Google Sitemaps & punishment for bad URLS?
Hoping y'all have some input here. This is along story, but I'll boil it down: Site X bought the url of Site Y. 301 redirects were added to direct traffic (and help transfer linkjuice) from urls in Site X to relevant urls in Site Y, but 2 days before a "change of address" notice was submitted in Google Webmaster Tools, an auto-generating sitemap somehow applied urls from Site Y to the sitemap of Site X, so essentially the sitemap contained urls that were not the url of Site X. Is there any documentation out there that Google would punish Site X for having essentially unrelated urls in its sitemap by downgrading organic search rankings because it may view that mistake as black hat (or otherwise evil) tactics? I suspect this because the site continues to rank well organically in Yahoo & Bing, yet is nonexistent on Google suddenly. Thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RUNNERagency0 -
Should I 301 Redirect a Site with an 'Unnatural Link' Warning?
Hey Fellow Mozzers, I have recently been approached by a new client that has been issued with an 'Unnatural Link' warning and lost almost all of their rankings. Open Site Explorer shows a ton of spammy links all using main keyword anchor text and there are way too many of them to even consider manually getting them removed. There are two glimmers of hope for the client; The first is that the spammy links are dropping off at a rate of about 25 per week; The second is that they own both the .com and the .co.uk domain for their business. I would really appreciate some advice on the best way to handle this, should I :- Wait it out for some of the spammy links to drop off whilst at the same time pushing social media and build some good clean links using the URL and brand as anchor text? Then submit a recosideration request? Switch the website over from the .com domain to the .co.uk domain and carry out a 301 redirect? Switch the website over from the .com to the .co.uk without doing a redirect and start again for the client with a clean slate? I would still register an address change via Webmaster Tools. Add a duplicate site on the .co.uk domain. Leave the .com site in place but rel="canonical" the entire domain over to the .co.uk Any advice would be very much apprecited. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AdeLewis
Ade.0