Sitemap - What are the recommendations on the number of links
-
Hi,
I have a sitemap(s) which is very large(.i.e. 60000) links, is it recommended to have so many links and how come when I do a site search(site:mydomain) the number of links are less than on my site map?
-
Sitemaps cannot (should not) contain more than 50,000 URLs: https://www.sitemaps.org/faq.html#faq_sitemap_size
I'd recommend you instead create a sitemap index to house multiple sitemap files. Keep in mind you will need to separate the URLs in them in order to represent all 60K URLs you have in your existing sitemap.
Separately, EGOL makes excellent points: sitemaps aren't the only way to get pages indexed. It's entirely possible that you do not have sufficient internal links that aid crawlers' discovery of your content: https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link
You may also have directives (e.g. noindex) on certain pages or in your robots.txt that prevents crawlers from crawling and indexing certain parts of your site. It may be time for a technical audit: https://www.distilled.net/technical-seo-audit-checklist/
-
how come when I do a site search(site:mydomain) the number of links are less than on my site map?
There are many causes of poor indexing....
-- if your site does not have very many links, it is possible that Google does not crawl it deeply and completely, and might even forget many of your pages between crawls
-- poor indexing can be caused by a poor site structure, where you have category pages that link to subcategory pages which link to deep pages.... AND, you have lots of internal and external links hitting these category pages to force crawlers deep into your site - where they must chew their way out through a lot of pages
-- also, consider your content... is it unique, substantive, not copy-pasted from other websites... with such problems, Google can choose to ignore your pages
is it recommended to have so many links
That is a lot of links. I would consider two site maps, each with half of our pages, that will get more crawling deep into your site.
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
-
Pending Sitemaps
Hi, all Wondering if someone could give me a pointer or two, please. I cannot seem to get Google or Bing to crawl my sitemap. If I submit the sitemap in WMT and test it I get a report saying 44,322urls found. However, if I then submit that same sitemap it either says Pending (in old WMT) or Couldn't fetch in the new version. This couldn't fetch is very puzzling as it had no issue fetching the map to test it. My other domains on the same server are fine, the problem is limited to this one site. I have tried several pages on the site using the Fetch as Google tool and they load without issue, however, try as I may, it will not fetch my sitemap. The sitemapindex.xml file won't even submit. I can confirm my sitemaps, although large, work fine, please see the following as an example (minus the spaces, of course, didn't want to submit and make it look like I was just trying to get a link) https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemap.xml https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemapindex.xml I would welcome any feedback anyone could offer on this, please. It's driving me mad trying to work out what is up. Many thanks, Jeff
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wonkydogadmin0 -
Are These Links Junk?
I hired an SEO to create incoming links to me website insisting that only white hat techniques be used. The SEO was highly recommended by a family friend. In 3 months about 14 links to my site were obtained. The URLs for the domains where the links originate are below. I paid $8,000 for the services of the SEO provider to create the links over 4 months. When I looked at the links more carefully I noticed that the sites did not seem to have owners. That there was no phone number, physical address and scant information about ownership. I also noticed that most pages had outgoing links of a promotional nature. Also, that content created for me had grammatical and occasional spelling errors. The links did not look bad in terms of MOZ domain authority and MOZ page authority, but when I went subscribed to AHREFS a few days ago and evaluated the links, I noticed that the URL rating (somewhat equivalent to MOZ page authority) was really low. Furthermore, noticed that one of the domains solicits paid links from gambling sites. The SEO who sourced the links on my behalf says he will explain why I "have nothing to worry about". Dividing his monthly fee by the number of links and I paid $571 per link. Is it possible the the below domains could have pages that I would want links from? Would these links be potentially worth more than a few hundred dollars? O are these sites more like a cheap PBN or maybe "the hoth". If the links are in fact good I would be delighted. But if they are of poor quality could I legitimately ask for a refund? Also, are these domains so bad that it is imperative for me to get the links removed? <colgroup><col width="198"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
| https://www.equities.com |
| http://www.realestaterama.com |
| https://moneyinc.com |
| https://homebusinessmag.com |
| http://digitalconnectmag.com |
| https://suburbanfinance.com/ |
| http://www.homebunch.com |
| http://inman.com |
| https://www.propertytalk.com/ |
| http://activerain.com |
| https://www.conservativedailynews.com/ |
| http://moneyforlunch.com/ |
| http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/ |
| https://www.tgdaily.com/ |
| |0 -
Large number of links form Pinterest
Could unusually large number of links from Pinterest cause issues? Would Google categorise them as spammy links or site wide links? I have a small site with Urls around 800-1000. But webmaster shows 5321 links from Pinterest.com and 1467 from Pinterest.se. Please see attachment. ffNLF
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | riyaaaz0 -
Will an inbound follow link on a site be devalued by an inbound affiliate link on the same site?
Hey guys, quick question I didn't find an answer to online. Scenario: 1. Site A links to Site B. It's a natural, regular, follow-link 2. Site A joins Site B's affiliate program, and adds an affiliate link Question: Does the first, regular follow link get devalued by the second affiliate link? Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ipancake0 -
Simple Link Question
Hi Guys, I will appreciate if you answer 1 small question..... Will our site benefit from that link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal
Valuable website related to our business ---nofollow link--> PDF Doc(on second site) ---link to our site ---> Kind Regards,
webdeal0 -
Help Identifying Unnatural Links
http://bit.ly/XT8yYYHi,Any help with the below will be most appreciated.We received an unnatural links warning in Webmaster Tools and noticed a large drop in our rankings. We downloaded and carried out a full link audit (3639 links) and logged in an excel spreadsheet with the following status: OK, Have Contacted, Can't Contact, Not SureWe have had some success but the majority of the ones we identified are not contactable.We use the dis-avow tool to tell Google of these. We then submitted a reconsideration request where we explained to Google our efforts and that we can supply them with our audit if necessary by email as you can't upload any evidence.A few days later we received a response suggesting that we still have unnatural links. We are a little stuck as we don't know what they can be:1. Is Google actually looking at our dis-avowed links before making this judgement?2. We have missed something that Google is considering bad but we can't see in our audit?Again we need a little help as we are trying to sort this out but can't see what we are falling down on.I can provide our spreadsheet if necessary.Many ThanksLee
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LeeFella0 -
.GOV Link - same impact on my site's rankings whether link to home or Gov related category?
I own a job site and I am about to get a link from a .GOV. My site has a category called "State Jobs". Should I ask the ".Gov" to link to my homepage or to the state job page and use the anchor text "State Jobs". I understand "State Jobs" page would get a big kick by that being the anchor text and linking to that specific page, but the question I have is this: for my site as a whole (homepage and various categories) would they get around the same "push up" whether the linking is to 1) my homepage with anchor text being my site's name or 2) to the state job specific page and in this case the anchor text would be "State Jobs"? thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Linking across categories
On a website when I link across in the same category should all the categories all pear on each page. Let's say I have 6 categories and 6 pages should I have the 6 links on all the pages ( such as A, B, C, D, E, on page 1 ( let's imagine this page is page F ), then on page A have link B, C D, E, F and so on for the 6 pages ( meaning all the links appear on all the pages across the category ) or should i just have let's say 3 links on page 1 ( link A, B, C ) , then link ( D, E, F ) on page 2, then A, E, F on page 3, link B, C F on page 4 and so on... ( which means that i vary the links that appear and that it is naturally ( at least I think ) going to boost the link that appears the most of the 6 pages ? I hope this is not too confusing, Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0