Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
XML Sitemap on another domain
-
Hi,
We've rebuilt our website and created a better sitemap index structure. There's a good chance that we not be able to append the XML files to existing site for technical reasons (don't get me started).
I'm reaching out because I'm wondering if can we place the XML files on another website or subdomain? I know this is not best practice and probably very grey but I'm looking for alternatives.
If there answer is DON'T DO IT let me know too.
Thx
-
I read a post by bings Duane Forrester where he explained that they will lose trust in your site map if it has errors more then 2%. all entries should return status code 200, no 404's or redirects.
He also said that you should not include all pages, just places where you want bing to start crawling from, or where you want to discover links.
-
You can actually host sitemap.xml files on external domains, you just need too verify them all in Web Master tools.
Guidelines here from Google: Sitemaps for multiple sites
-
Thx Mike and we already have the HTML sitemap ready to go.
Alan - I don't know all the details but they just informed me, they were able to create them on the proper URL.
Sorry for the futile exercise but good to know either way.
-
I agree with mike, but I am curious why you cant have a xml sitemap, maybe you need to chage hosting
-
If you cannot create and update an XML sitemap for your site, you should consider creating an HTML sitemap. While you cannot submit an HTML sitemap to search engines, spiders can crawl your HTML sitemap and crawl pages deeper into your site.
Matt Cutts says that if you can only do 1 type of sitemap, do an HTML one, because it helps both users and bots.
Hope this helps.
Mike
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
-
Shopify Site with Multiple Domains?
Hey there! My client has a website on Shopify. I don't even know how to open this can of worms, but let me try. The site URL is: https://mobilityequipmentforless.com/ However, there is another (older?) URL that gets updated as the main site gets updated and shows the exact same content. It's a straight duplicate, but is it's own URL and doesn't redirect to the main site. https://www.powerchairrecyclers.com/ And this isn't the SITE.Shopify back-end site name that was used for set up initially. I just have no idea what's going on here. Not sure if it's a serious error that needs to be fixed, or if it's something weird with how Shopify work. Any insight would be immensely helpful. Thanks! Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | naturalsociety0 -
XML sitemap generator only crawling 20% of my site
Hi guys, I am trying to submit the most recent XML sitemap but the sitemap generator tools are only crawling about 20% of my site. The site carries around 150 pages and only 37 show up on tools like xml-sitemaps.com. My goal is to get all the important URLs we care about into the XML sitemap. How should I go about this? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TyEl0 -
Hreflang in header...should I do a Sitemap?
A client implemented hreflang tags in the site header. MOZ says you aren't supposed to do an hreflang Sitemap as well. My question is how should I do a Sitemap now (or should I do one at all)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | navdm0 -
Should I redirect my xml sitemap?
Hi Mozzers, We have recently rebranded with a new company name, and of course this necessitated us to relaunch our entire website onto a new domain. I watched the Moz video on how they changed domain, copying what they did pretty much to the letter. (Thank you, Moz for sharing this with the community!) It has gone incredibly smoothly. I told all my bosses that we may see a 40% reduction in traffic / conversions in the short term. In the event (and its still very early days) we have in fact seen a 15% increase in traffic and our new website is converting better than before so an all-round success! I was just wondering if you thought I should redirect my XML sitemap as well? So far I haven't, but despite us doing the change of address thing in webmaster tools, I can see Google processed the old sitemap xml after we did the change of address etc. What do you think? I know we've been very lucky with the outcome of this rebrand but I don't want to rest on my laurels or get tripped up later down the line. Thanks everyone! Amelia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT0 -
Subdomain Blog Sitemap link - Add it to regular domain?
Example of setup:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EEE3
www.fancydomain.com
blog.fancydomain.com Because of certain limitations, I'm told we can't put our blogs at the subdirectory level, so we are hosting our blogs at the subdomain level (blog.fancydomain.com). I've been asked to incorporate the blog's sitemap link on the regular domain, or even in the regular domain's sitemap. 1. Putting the a link to blog.fancydomain.com/sitemap_index.xml in the www.fancydomain.com/sitemap.xml -- isn't this against sitemap.org protocol? 2. Is there even a reason to do this? We do have a link to the blog's home page from the www.fancydomain.com navigation, and the blog is set up with its sitemap and link to the sitemap in the footer. 3. What about just including a text link "Blog Sitemap" (linking to blog.fancydomain.com/sitemap_index.html) in the footer of the www.fancydomain.com (adjacent to the text link "Sitemap" which already exists for the www.fancydomain.com's sitemap. Just trying to make sense of this, and figure out why or if it should be done. Thanks!0 -
Primary Domain or Redirect?
We are starting a new travel guide for a resort town. I have bought an expired domain with decent related links and PR (which seems to have survived the transfer (4 months ago). Beofre we launch the new site I am trying to decide if we should use this expired domain as the primary URL for the new site or just do a permanent redirect and buy a new domain that better matches the theme of the site. I am obviously concerned with starting from scatch with a new domain. I am confident we can build some good rellevant links in a short time but this space is very competetive. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Locals0 -
SEO value in multiple backlinks from same domain and from various sub-domains.
A site has a link to my site as one of their main tabs, which means whenever a user clicks through to another page within the site, my link - being a main tab - is there. This creates thousands of links from this site. How does Google treat this? Do we have a rough formula estimate. In other words, assume it creates 1,000 backlinks would the SEO value be around the same as if I had just 2 link total as a main tab, but on 2 different non-related sites? Or, does it actually count fully as 1,000 links? Links from various sub-domains. Several .EDU's are linking to my site. Different schools within the overall same university. Example: nursing.abc.edu links to my site, but so does business.abc.edu. For SEO does that count as much as if I had links from complete non-related universities, or would Google evaluate that these links are related (since same main domain) and that will discount any links more than 1 to some extent? If discounted, then what do we estimate the discount to be? thank yoyu
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen1 -
Exact match domain names
Hello, Someone approached a client of mine to sell a exact match domain name for a very competitive and high converting keyword. Would this be of any use and what are the best tactics to employ if it is purchased? I was of the opinion that the 'power' of exact match domain names are dying fast but would be interested to hear what people with experience in this think and what they have done with them (i.e. set-up a website on that domain or re-directed it)? Thanks, Rikki
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RikkiD220