<loc>tag empty in sitemap, is this ok?</loc>
-
Hi - our website's sitemap is pretty huge, and I'm trying to generate it with the hreflang= information in it, because we have 11 different language sites all under the .com. I used the Media Flow generator for this purpose, but it returned a lot of entries with a blank tag. Our U.S. website by far has the most pages, so an example of what I'm getting is:
Does this look correct???? Doesn't to me but I'm unsure.
-
Your mistake is that you probably used relative URLs and not absolute ones (these are the ones like: http://www.domain.com/)
So, the hreflang in sitemaps.xml for your home page should be this (please note that I put /it/ but you should put the real italian version home page, and that is valid for all URLs:
<url><loc>http://www.domain.com/</loc></url>
As for your second question - mixing matching and not matching URLs in the hreflang annotations - I would not suggest it.
-
Doesn't look right to me either. My next question would be, should I mix the sitemap for urls that have a match in other countries with those that don't? Like this:
<url><loc>http://www.mywebsite.com</loc>
<lastmod>2014-11-12</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority></url><url><loc>http://www.mywebsite.com/blah.html</loc></url>
-
Well it doesn't seem correct to me, as the location for the english page is the original URL in there it should also have an origin. That URL should be in the <loc>tag.</loc>
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
-
Our site is on a secure server (https) will a link to http:// be of less value?
Our site is hosted on a secure network (I.E. Our web address is - https://www.workbooks.com). Will a backlink pointing to: http://www.workbooks.com provide less value than a link pointing to: https://www.workbooks.com ? Many thanks, Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam.at.Moz0 -
Proper sitemap update frequency
I have 12 sitemaps submitted to Google. After about a week, Google is about 50% of the way through crawling each one. In the past week I've created many more pages. Should I wait until Google is 100% complete with my original sitemaps or can I just go ahead and refresh them? When I refresh the original files will have different URLs.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcgoodrich0 -
XML Sitemaps - how to create the perfect XML Sitemap
Hello, We have a site that is not updated very often - currently we have a script running to create/update the XML sitemap every time a page is added/edited or deleted. I have a few questions about best practices for creating XML sitemaps. 1. If the site is not updated for months on end - is it a bad idea to force the script to update i.e. changing the dates once a month? Will google noticed nothing has changed just the date i.e. all the content on the site is exactly the same. Will they start penalising you for updating an XML sitemap when there is nothing new about the website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK
2. Is it worth automating the XML file to link into Bing/Google to update via webmaster tools - as I say even if the site is never updated?
3. Is the use of "priorities" necessary?
4. The changefreq - does that mean Google/Bing expects to see a new file ever month?
5. The ordering of the pages - the script seems pretty random and put the pages in a random order - should we make it order the pages with the most important ones first? Should the home page always be first?
6. Below is a sample of how our XML sitemap appears - is there anything that we should change? i.e. all marked up properly? This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"><url><loc>http://www.domain.com</loc>
<lastmod>2013-11-06</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq></url>
<url><loc>http://www.domain.com/contact/</loc>
<lastmod>2013-11-06</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq></url>
<url><loc>http://www.domain.com/sitemap/</loc>
<lastmod>2013-11-06</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq></url></urlset> Hope someone can help enlighten us to best practices0 -
How important are sitemap errors?
If there aren't any crawling / indexing issues with your site, how important do thing sitemap errors are? Do you work to always fix all errors? I know here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/bings-duane-forrester-on-webmaster-tools-metrics-and-sitemap-quality-thresholds Duane Forrester mentions that sites with many 302's 301's will be punished--does any one know Googe's take on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Sitemap or Sitemaps for Magento and Wordpress?
I'm trying to figure out what to do with our sitemap situation. We have a magento install for our shopping cart
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chrishansen
sdhydroponics.com
and a wordpress install on
sdhydroponics.com/resources In Magento we get the XML sitemap manually by going to Catalog => Google Sitemap => Add Sitemap In wordpress we use Google XML sitemaps plugin. My questions are: Do I need both of these sitemaps? Or can I use one or the other? If I use both, do I make one sitemap1.xml and the other sitemap2.xml and drop them in the root? How do I make sure google knows I have 2 sitemaps? Anything else I should know? Thank You0 -
Local Business schema / markup
What markup should local businesses employ on their website? I'm aware of the newer schema.org markup but does Google still use rich snippets, geotags, etc.?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BryanPhelps-BigLeapWeb0 -
Use of <h2class="hidden">- SEO implications</h2class="hidden">
I'm just looking at a website with <h2class="hidden">Main Navigation and <h2class="hidden">Footer inserted on each page, and am wondering about the SEO implications.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
<a></a><a></a><a></a><a></a></h2class="hidden"></h2class="hidden">0 -
What on-page/site optimization techniques can I utilize to improve this site (http://www.paradisus.com/)?
I use a Search Engine Spider Simulator to analyze the homepage and I think my client is using black hat tactics such as cloaking. Am I right? Any recommendations on to improve the top navigation under Resorts pull down. Each of the 6 resorts listed are all part of the Paradisus brand, but each resort has their own sub domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0