Sitemap Question
-
Hello,
I have a website and my sitemap (generated by the Yoast plugin) is set up into three different sections. One thing I noticed was that my homepage isn't in my sitemap.
Is this an issue? The homepage is indexed, but does it need to be added to the sitemap in order for it to be crawled?
How would I go about adding the homepage to the sitemap?
-
I don't think it's a big deal not to have it, but for something that can be done in literally 10 seconds I'd play safe than sorry.
To explain what I meant about the duplicate home pages, you can often have multiple versions accessible to the public. For example:
I haven't looked at how you have it set up, but all should go only to one version to prevent home page duplication, and the final version you decide on would be the one you include in the sitemap. Hope that helps!
-
Hi Brandon,
No, it shouldn't be an issue at all. I have it like that for a lot of the sites I run so it's not a big deal
If you feel uncomfortable with it, switch over to a separate plugin and deactivate the yoast one. I know a lot of people that do so (usually because they are comfortable using /sitemap.xml LOL)
-
Look in your site map file, and copy and paste one of the other url snippets. Change out the url for the url of your homepage. Make sure to double check the urls that were included, for any unusual urls. With cms-based sites, site map plug-ins can include non-sef urls, that you don't want indexed.
I usually make my sitemaps manually. You should include plenty of info, including creation date, last modified date, etc. If you need a template or would like me to send you a sample site map with the correct structure, let me know.
And to answer your question, yes, I would include the home page url. While you are at it, make sure your site cannot be accessed with www and no www.it should always go to one or the other. Same goes with index.php for the homepage.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Questions about backlinks in wikipedia
Hi I read some articles about Wikipedia links but most of them were talking about how to get links from Wikipedia and no one says about its benefits! We all know that Wikipedia backlinks are nofollow and in most of the articles in Wikipedia, users don't click on the link! So it doesn't pass visitors so nofollow links don't pass the authority. But because this website has trustworthy links, might effect on serp. In your experience does Wikipedia links effect on serp? What grade you will give to this kind of links between one and 100? Between edu, gov, wiki and such this important links which one is more important? I will be glad if you share your experience.
Algorithm Updates | | meysamzare7112365410 -
Only half of the sitemap is indexed
I have a website with high domain authority and high quality content and blog. I've resubmitted the sitemap half a dozen times. Search console getr half way through and then stops. Does anyone know any reason for this? I've seen the usual responses of 'google is not obligated to crawl you' but this site has been fully crawled in the past. It's very odd Does anyone have any ideas why it might stop half way - or does anyone know a testing tool that might illuminate the situation?
Algorithm Updates | | Andrew-SEO0 -
Should I create a menu link for sitemap?
Hi guys, I am new to SEO and I have a question for you guys. We created a sitemap for our website. I was thinking of creating a sitemap link on our homepage. Do you think it's a good idea? Would this help us in terms of ranking improvements? Or would help with anything at all? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | ahmetkul0 -
Sitemaps for landing pages
Good morning MOZ Community, We've been doing some re-vamping recently on our primary sitemap, and it's currently being reindexed by the search engines. We have also been developing landing pages, both for SEO and SEM. Specifically for SEO, the pages are focused on specific, long-tail search terms for a number of our niche areas of focus. Should I, or do I need to be considering a separate sitemap for these? Everything I have read about sitemaps simply indicates that if a site has over 50 thousand pages or so, then you need to split a sitemap. Do I need to worry about a sitemap for landing pages? Or simply add them to our primary sitemap? Thanks in advance for your insights and advice.
Algorithm Updates | | bwaller0 -
Sitemap link in footer?? Is it needed
Hi, I know sitemap is important to have as it tells google the pages to crawl. I have an xml sitemap for google to crawl. However, Do I need a sitemap link in footer. Any thoughts?? Does it have any harm if I dont include a sitemap link in footer
Algorithm Updates | | pejman500 -
SEO Budgets, the million dollar question???
Hi All, I am currently looking to revamp my SEO strategy inline with Google's latest Panda and Penguin updates, and looking to appoint a new agency. With SEO changing so much over the years and so many players in the marketplace quoting all sorts, I simply need to determine the kind of money I need to be spending on my SEO, 2) what i should be getting for the money, or different budget levels what I need to be focusing on in priority order, a top ten in sorts Should i be looking to increase or decrease my spend over the long term. I am only a small business with a turnover of about 50 - 80k and need to really cement my strategy so it work long term but also shows a steady return. I have one guy quoting $99 a month, one £250 and one £750, you can probably see my problem. Thanks in advance.
Algorithm Updates | | etsgroup0 -
Video SEO: Youtube, Vimeo PRO, Wistia, Longtail BOTR Experience and questions
Obviously Video SEO is changing, Google is figuring out how to do it themselves. We are left wondering… Below we have tried to explain what we have learned and how the different sites work and their characteristics (links to graphics provided) Our problem is: We are not getting congruent Google site:apalytics.tv Video filter results. We are wondering how duplicate content may be affecting our results… and if so, why will Youtube not be duplicate and prevent your own site SEO efforts from working. Is Youtube special? Does that include Vimeo too? We see our own duplicate videos on multiple sites in Google results, so it seems it is not duplicate related…? We’d appreciate your experience or add to our questions and work as a community to get this figured out more definitively. Thanks! We’ve tried four video hosting solutions at quite a cost monetarily and in time. 1.) Youtube, which gets all the SEO Juice and gets our clients on to other subjects or potentially competitive content. Iframes just don’t get the results we are looking for. 2.) See Vimeo Image: Vimeo PRO, a $200 year plus solution that allows us to do many video carousels on our own domains hosted on Vimeo, but are very limited in HTML as only CSS content changes are allowed. While we were using Vimeo we allowed the Vimeo.com community to SEO our content directly and they come up often in search results. Due to duplicate content concerns we have disallowed Vimeo.com from using our content and SEOing our content to their domain. However, we have many “portfolios” (micro limited carousal sites on our domains) that continue to carry the content. The Vimeo hosted micro site shows only three videos on Google: site:apalytics.tv During our testing we are concerned that duplicate content is causing issues too, so we are getting ready to shut off the many microsite domains hosted at Vimeo. (Vimeo has an old embed code that allows a NON-iframe embed – but has discontinued it recently) That makes it difficult if not impossible to retain SEO juice for anything other than their simple micro sites that are very limited! 3.) See Wistia Image: Wistia, a $2000 year plus solution that only provides private video site hosting embedding various types of video content on one’s site/s. Wistia has a free account now for three videos and limited plays – it’s a nice interface for SEO but is still different than BOTR. We opted for BOTR because of many other advertising related options, but are again trying Wistia with the free version to see if we can figure out why our BOTR videos are not showing up as hoped. We know that Google does not promise to index and feature every video on a sitemap, but why some are there and others are not and when remains a mystery that we are hoping to get some answers about. 4.) See Longtail Image: Longtail, Bits On The Run, (JW Player author) a $1,000 year plus like Wistia provides private hosting, but it allows a one button YouTube upload for the same SEO meta data and content – isn’t that duplicate content? BOTR creates and submits video sitemaps for your content, but it has not been working for us and it has been impossible to get a definitive answer as I think they too are learning or are not wanting the expose their proprietary methods (which are not yet working for us!) 2O9w0.png 0eiPv.png O9bXV.png
Algorithm Updates | | Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.0