Sitemaps: Best Practice
-
What should and what shouldn't go in the sitemap?
In particular, pages like subscribe to our newsletter/ unsubscribe to our newsletter? Is there really any benefit in highlighting those pages to the SEs?
Thanks for any advice/ anecdotes
-
So, sometimes, people think adding a sitemap to their company website, is something thats very difficult to do.
for example, they may think they need a web designer to do this for them, yet often you can do it yourself, its very simple.
so if your business has a WordPress website, then it can be a piece of cake to add a site map.
If you use Yoast, its a free plugin, , you can add a site map very easily to your website, which you can then send to your site map to Google Search Console for indexing .
We did this for a large garden room company within the city of Bristol, and what happens is that it makes sure every single page and blog post is indexed.
-
Pages that I like to call 'core' site URLs should go in your sitemap. Basically, unique (canonical) pages which are not highly duplicate, which Google would wish to rank
I would include core addresses
I wouldn't include uploaded documents, installers, archives, resources (images, JS modules, CSS sheets, SWF objects), pagination URLs or parameter based children of canonical pages (e.g: example.com/some-page is ok to rank, but not example.com/some-page?tab=tab3). Parameters are additional funky stuff added to URLs following "?" or "&".
There are exceptions to these rules, some sites use parameters to render their on-page content - even for canonical addresses. Those old architecture types are fast dying out, though. If you're on WordPress I would index categories, but not tags which are non-hierarchical and messy (they really clutter up your SERPs)
Try crawling your site using Screaming Frog. Export all the URLs (or a large sample of them) into an Excel file. Filter the file, see which types of addresses exist on your site and which technologies are being used. Feed Google the unique, high-value pages that you know it should be ranking
I have said not to feed pagination URLs to Google, that doesn't mean they should be completely de-indexed. I just think that XML sitemaps should be pretty lean and streamlined. You can allow things which aren't in your XML sitemap to have a chance of indexation, but if you have used something like a Meta no-index tag or a robots.txt edit to block access to a page - **do not **then feed it to Google in your XML. Try to keep **all **of your indexation modules in line with each other!
No page which points to another, separate address via a canonical tag (thus calling itself 'non-canonical') should be in your XML sitemap. No page that is blocked via Meta no-index or Robots.txt should be in your sitemap.XML either
If you end up with too many pages, think about creating a sitemap XML index instead, which links through to other, separate sitemap files
Hope that helps!
-
To further on from this, we have some parameter urls in our sitemap which make me uneasy. should url.com/blah.html?option=1 be in the sitemap? If so, what benefit is that giving us?
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
-
What is the best comments system / plugin for websites
Hi, What is the best comments system / plugin for websites that not harm seo Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut0 -
What are best page titles for sub-domain pages?
Hi Moz communtity, Let's say a website has multiple sub-domains with hundreds and thousands of pages. Generally we will be mentioning "primary keyword & "brand name" on every page of website. Can we do same on all pages of sub-domains to increase the authority of website for this primary keyword in Google? Or it gonna end up as negative impact if Google consider as duplicate content being mentioned same keyword and brand name on every page even on website and all pages of sub domains? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Best support site software to use
Hi Guys We currently use Desk to run our company support site, it seems ok (I don't administer it), however is it very template driven and doesn't allow useful tools such as being able to add metadata to each page (hence in our Moz crawl tests we get a large number of no metadata errors (which seems like a lost opportunity for us to optimise the site). Our support team are looking to implement MadCap Flare as an information management tool, however this tool outputs HTML as iframes which obviously make it hard for google to crawl the content. We recently implemented HubSpot as our content marketing platform which is great, and we'd love to have the support site hosted on this (great for tracking traffic etc), however as far as I'm aware MadCap Flare doesn't integrate directly with HubSpot....so looking for suggestions on what others are successfully using to host/manage their SEO optimised support sites? Cheers Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SnapComms0 -
Custom sitemap or sitemap generator tool
I have recently launched a website which is using a free sitemap generator (http://web-site-map.com/). It's a large travel agency site (www.yougoadventure.com) with predominantly dynamically generated content - users can add their products as and when and be listed automatically. The guy doing the programming for the site says the sitemap generator is not up to the job and that I should be ranking far better for certain search terms than the site is now. He reckons it doesn't provide lastmod info and the sitemap should be submitted every time a new directory is added or change made. He seems to think that I need to spend ÂŁ400-ÂŁ500 for him to custom build a site map. Surely there's a cheaper option out there for a sitemap that can be generated daily or 'ping' google every-time an addition to the site is made or product added? Sorry for the non tech speak - Ive got my web designer telling one thing and the programmer another so im just left trawling through Q&As. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Curran0 -
E-commerce site, one product multiple categories best practice
Hi there, We have an e-commerce shopping site with over 8000 products and over 100 categories. Some sub categories belong to multiple categories - for example, A Christmas trees can be under "Gardening > Plants > Trees" and under "Gifts > Holidays > Christmas > Trees" The product itself (example: Scandinavian Xmas Tree) can naturally belong to both these categories as well. Naturally these two (or more) categories have different breadcrumbs, different navigation bars, etc. From an SEO point of view, to avoid duplicate content issues, I see the following options: Use the same URL and change the content of the page (breadcrumbs and menus) based on the referral path. Kind of cloaking. Use the same URL and display only one "main" version of breadcrumbs and menus. Possibly add the other "not main" categories as links to the category / product page. Use a different URL based on where we came from and do nothing (will create essentially the same content on different urls except breadcrumbs and menus - there's a possibiliy to change the category text and page title as well) Use a different URL based on where we came from with different menus and breadcrumbs and use rel=canonical that points to the "main" category / product pages This is a very interesting issue and I would love to hear what you guys think as we are finalizing plans for a new website and would like to get the most out of it. Thank you all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | arikbar0 -
Xml Sitemap for a large automobile website
Hello moz fellas, I need expert advice for PakWheels about xml sitemap generation. There are hundreds of thousands of pages (mostly USG) and these are increasing day by day. What is the best practice of controlling all these pages in xml format. Where can we generate sitemap.xml to submit in Google and Bing webmaster tools. Your input may help us in managing these URLs in an xml format. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | razasaeed1 -
What is the best canonical url to use for a product page?
I just helped a client redesign and launch a new website for their organic skin care company (www.hylunia.com). The site is built in Magento which by default creates MANY urls for each product. Which of these two do you think would be the best to use as the canonical version? http://www.hylunia.com/pure-hyaluronic-acid-solutionÂ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielmoss
or http://www.hylunia.com/products/face-care/facial-moisturizers/pure-hyaluronic-acid-solution ? I'm leaning on the latter, because it makes sense to me to have the breadcrumbs match the url string, and also it seems having more keywords in the url would help. However, it's obviously a very long url, and there might be some benefits to using the shorter version that I'm not aware of. Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts. Best, Daniel0 -
Best practice for removing pages
I've got some crappy pages that I want to delete from a site. I've removed all the internal links to those pages and resubmitted new site maps that don't show the pages anymore, however the pages still index in search (as you would expect). My question is, what's the best practice for removing these pages? Should I just delete them and be done with it or make them 301 re-direct to a nicer generic page until they are removed from the search results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterAlexLeigh0