Sitemaps, 404s and URL structure
-
Hi All!
I recently acquired a client and noticed in Search Console over 1300 404s, all starting around late October this year.
What's strange is that I can access the pages that are 404ing by cutting and pasting the URLs and via inbound links from other sites.
I suspect the issue might have something to do with Sitemaps. The site has 5 Sitemaps, generated by the Yoast plugin. 2 Sitemaps seem to be working (pages being indexed), 3 Sitemaps seem to be not working (pages have warnings, errors and nothing shows up as indexed). The pages listed in the 3 broken sitemaps seem to be the same pages giving 404 errors.
I'm wondering if auto URL structure might be the culprit here. For example, one sitemap that works is called newsletter-sitemap.xml, all the URLs listed follow the structure: http://example.com/newsletter/post-title
Whereas, one sitemap that doesn't work is called culture-event-sitemap.xml. Here the URLs underneath follow the structure http://example.com/post-title.
Could it be that these URLs are not being crawled / found because they don't follow the structure http://example.com/culture-event/post-title? If not, any other ideas?
Thank you for reading this long post and helping out a relatively new SEO!
-
Hi Daniel! Thanks for your question.
It's kind of hard to know what's going on without seeing your site. Feel free to PM it to me.
There's definitely a chance that this is the case, but if it's happening with Yoast it is likely a configuration issue on your site not with Yoast's technology. You may need to adjust your tag permalinks within your WordPress admin so that the URLs are correct in your sitemaps.
John
-
I'll make my question shorter and hopefully more clear...
If my Permalink structure in Wordpress is set up for a given custom post type, lets call it "culture", as: example.com/postname,
Yet with Yoast, a sitemap is automatically generated for posts tagged with "culture" that looks like example.com/culture/postname
Could that explain why posts being tagged as "culture" are showing up as 404s in Search Console?
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
-
Sitemap Rules
Hello there, I have some questions pertaining to sitemaps that I would appreciate some guidance on. 1. Can an XML sitemap contain URLs that are blocked by robots.txt? Logically, it makes sense to me to not include pages blocked by robots.txt but would like some clarity on the matter i.e. will having pages blocked by robots.txt in a sitemap, negatively impact the benefit of a sitemap? 2. Can a XML sitemap include URLs from multiple subdomains? For example: http://www.example.com/www-sitemap.xml would include the home page URL of two other subdomains i.e. http://blog.example.com/ & http://blog2.example.com/ Thanks
Technical SEO | | SEONOW1230 -
404s effecting crawl rate?
We made a change to our site where we all of a sudden we are creating a large number of 404 pages. Is this effecting the crawl/indexing rate? Currently we've submitted 3.4 million pages, have over 834K indexed but have over and 330K pages not found. Since the large increase in 404s we've noticed a decrease in pages crawled per day. I found this Q & A in Webmasters (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/do-404s-hurt-my-site.html) but it seems like the 404s should not have an effect. Is this article out of date? What do you think fellow Moz-ers? Is this a problem?
Technical SEO | | JoshKimber0 -
Sitemap indexation
3 days ago I sent in a new sitemap for a new platform. Its 23.412 pages but until now its only 4 pages (!!) that are indexed according to the Webmaster Tools. Why so few? Our stage-enviroment got indexed (more than 50K pages) in a few days by a mistake.
Technical SEO | | Morten_Hjort0 -
What would be the optimum URL structure for an inbound tour operator that sells tours in Jordan?
We are an inbound tour operator in Jordan. We have just redesigned and restructured our website. We sell tours in Jordan (Jordan Tours) and this is the primary keyword we are targeting. Our Jordan Tours page includes different tour categories. Each category takes you to a number of tours to choose from. What would be the best URL structure that will optimize our ranking for "Jordan Tours"? A. /jordantours/tour-type-category/tour-name B. /jordantours/tour-name C. /tour-name I have to admit that two weeks ago we launched the new site and went with option C. by intuition, aiming at reducing the clutter for a better user experience. So if C isn't the answer, is it worth making the change and applying 301 redirects after our new pages has been indexed for 2 weeks? Your insight is much appreciated. Thank you, Rakan
Technical SEO | | rakan0 -
XML Sitemap Issue or not?
Hi Everyone, I submitted a sitemap within the google webmaster tools and I had a warning message of 38 issues. Issue: Url blocked by robots.txt. Description: Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt. Example: the ones that were given were urls that we don't want them to be indexed: Sitemap: www.example.org/author.xml Value: http://www.example.org/author/admin/ My issue here is that the number of URL indexed is pretty low and I know for a fact that Robot.txt aren't good especially if they block URL that needs to be indexed. Apparently the URLs that are blocked seem to be URLs that we don't to be indexed but it doesn't display all URLs that are blocked. Do you think i m having a major problem or everything is fine?What should I do? How can I fix it? FYI: Wordpress is what we use for our website Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tay19860 -
What's the best URL Structure if my company is in multiple locations or cities?
I have read numerous intelligent, well informed responses to this question but have yet to hear a definitive answer from an authority. Here's the situation. Let's say I have a company who's URL is www.awesomecompany.com who provides one service called 'Awesome Service' This company has 20 franchises in the 20 largest US cities. They want a uniform online presence, meaning they want their design to remain consistent across all 20 domains. My question is this; what's the best domain or url structure for these 20 sites? Subdomain - dallas.awesomecompany.co Unique URL - www.dallasawesomecompany.com Directory - www.awesomecompany.com/dallas/ Here's my thoughts on this question but I'm really hoping someone b*tch slaps me and tells me I'm wrong: Of these three potential solutions these are how I would rank them and why: Subdomains Pros: Allows me to build an entire site so if my local site grows to 50+ pages, it's still easy to navigate Allows me to brand root domain and leverage brand trust of root domain (let's say the franchise is starbucks.com for instance) Cons: This subdomain is basically a brand new url in google's eyes and any link building will not benefit root domain. Directory Pros Fully leverages the root domain branding and fully allows for further branding If the domain is an authority site, ranking for sub pages will be achieved much quicker Cons While this is a great solution if you just want a simple map listing and contact info page for each of your 20 locations, what if each location want's their own "about us" page and their own "Awesome Service" page optimized for their respective City (i.e. Awesome Service in Dallas)? The Navigation and potentially the URL is going to start to get really confusing and cumbersome for the end user. Think about it, which is preferable?: dallas.awesomcompany.com/awesome-service/ www.awesomecompany.com/dallas/awesome-service (especially when www.awesomecompany.com/awesome-service/ already exists Unique URL Pros Potentially quicker rankings achieved than a subdomain if it's an exact match domain name (i.e. dallasawesomeservice.com) Cons Does not leverage the www.awesomecompany.com brand Could look like an imposter It is literally a brand new domain in Google's eyes so all SEO efforts would start from scratch Obviously what goes without saying is that all of these domains would need to have unique content on them to avoid duplicate content penalties. I'm very curious to hear what you all have to say.
Technical SEO | | BrianJGomez0 -
I need help to define which is the best friendly url structure
Hi, I need some help to define which is the best friendly url structure for my new project, I'm in doubt for some cases, anyone could help me define which would be the best way? domain.com/buy-online/0-1,this-cool-model or
Technical SEO | | LeonardoLima
domain.com/buy-online/this-cool-model,0-1 or
domain.com/buy-online/0-1/this-cool-model or
domain.com/buy-online/this-cool-model/0-1 or
domain.com/buy-online/this-cool-model_0-1 or
domain.com/buy-online/this-cool-model?Model=0&OtherParam=1 Thanks! Best Regards,
Leonardo Lima0 -
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