Need help creating sitemap
-
Hello,
The details of my question is sitemap related. Below is the background info:
we are ecommerce site with around 4000 pages, and 20000 images. we dont have a sitemap implemented on our site yet. i have checked alot of sitemap tools out there, like g-sitecrawler, xml sitemap, a1 sitemap builder etc, and i tried to create sitemaps via them, but all them give different results. the major links are all there, but the results start to vary for level 2, level 3 links and so on.
plus no matter how much i read up on sitemaps, the more i am getting confused. i read lots of seomoz articles on sitemaps, and due to my limited seo and technical knowledge, the extra information on these articles gets more confusing.
i also just read an article on seomoz that instead of having one sitemap, having multiple smaller sitemaps is very good idea, specially if we are adding lots of new products (which we are).
Now my question:
My question is having understood the immense value of sitemap (and by having it very poorly implemented before), how can i make sure that i get a very good sitemap (both xml and html sitemap). i do not want to do something again and just repeat old mistakes by having a poorly implemented sitemap for our site.
I am hoping that one of the professionals out there, can help me also make and implement the sitemap.
If you can please point me to the right direction.
-
I use http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ as well its well worth the money. you want an accurate site map and you can always edit the text file if you are handy in xml.
-
I've been using xml-sitemaps software for years now, their paid software is great. If you are running PHP based server, you just add the files to one directory and follow the installation steps. It will not only index the entire content, but you can also set limits on how many links per sitemap, they offer addons that automatically creates images/video sitemaps, news, etc. The software also creates an HTML version of the sitemap. And the XML version uses CSS so you can read it with ease.
I would go with them, the software even gives you info on how to submit the sitemaps to Google, sitemap index, etc. Then you can also create a link in the robots.txt so spiders know where to crawl:
Something like:
User-agent: * Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
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
-
Need advice on redirects
Hi, I have new web addresses for my subpages. None if them have external links. Should I do redirects to the new pages or just leave the old pages in 404 and let google crawl and rank the new page. I am asking because my current pages don’t have a good ranking and I am thinking starting with a clean url is better. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Can I add external links to my sitemap?
Hi, I'm integrating with a service that adds 3rd-party images/videos (owned by them, hosted on their server) to my site. For instance, the service might have tons of pictures/videos of cars; and then when I integrate, I can show my users these pictures/videos about cars I might be selling. But I'm wondering how to build out the sitemap--I would like to include reference to these images/videos, so Google knows I'm using lots of multimedia. How's the most white-hat way to do that? Can I add external links to my sitemap pointing to these images/videos hosted on a different server, or is that frowned upon? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOdub0 -
Sitemap Indexed vs. Submitted
My sitemap has been submitted to Google for well over 6 months and is updated frequently, a total of 979 URLs have been submitted by only 145 indexed. What can I do to get Google to index them all?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Will Schema help my website?
I'm doing SEO on a website, zing.co.nz, which is a soon to launch company. At the moment there is a splash sight up, which will be replaced by the real sight in a few weeks upon launch. Is it worth me putting in Schemas (for the first time) so that it is recognized as an organization? Will this effect us in the serps? Thanks for your help 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Startupfactory0 -
Any experience with using programs to create UGC pages?
We have a new client (a mobile app) who created a program to create thousands of pages of "unique, user-generated content" for their website. An example: A person in the forum in app asks a question, and people respond. The client's program then compiles the question and responses into a unique, auto-generated page for the website. (I don't think the app is utilizing deep linking -- though I was going to recommend it -- so the app content is not indexed by search engines yet.) The pages are already created -- they are just not live on the site yet. I'm very skeptical. But the client says it's similar to what Stack Overflow does (or something like that). Basic example. Say that a question for which the client wants to rank is, "What Are the Symptoms of Cancer?" I'd think that a quality, human-created, referenced, well-written, authoritative page would obviously rank more highly than a UGC page based on a forum discussion on that topic. But of course, doing that for hundreds of questions is costly and hard to scale -- both of which are concerns of the client (a startup with little money). Has anyone had any experience in this? It's the first time I've tackled such an issue. Thanks in advance for any thoughts!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamuelScott0 -
Need onpage site audit and seo
i have a pretty old ecommerce website for home decor products. It has been experiencing some rank loss in the past year. No manual penalty but algo rank losses. I need someone to fix seo related issues on my site. It runs on magento with multistore configuration. please reply if you can offer any help nick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | orion680 -
Do we need breadcrumbs?
I found myself in a weird position today having to defend the use of breadcrumbs.... This is what I wrote.... From an SEO point of view it is best practice to have breadcrumbs as they are high up in the code and help the search engines crawling the site. Do you need a breadcrumb for SEO – Yes – as well as from a usability point of you view users can navigate a breadcrumb instead of hitting the back button. What would you have said?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Anchor text help
Hello, I am a small website designer in Mexico.. as you know it is hard to rank in these keywords My main competitors appear with (diseño web = web design) on google.com.mx Almost 80% of the anchor text from my links are (diseño web Mexico =web design Mexico) If I search (diseño web Mexico =web design) on google.com.mx I appear on first page. If I search (diseño web = web design) on google.com.mx I appear on page 3. My questions: Is this because my anchor text is diseño web Mexico? should i change it to (diseño web = web design)? Or is it because (diseño web = web design) is a harder key word to rank? this is my website http://bit.ly/eKyWvr Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pixelar0