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.
Should the sitemap include just menu pages or all pages site wide?
-
I have a Drupal site that utilizes Solr, with 10 menu pages and about 4,000 pages of content. Redoing a few things and we'll need to revamp the sitemap. Typically I'd jam all pages into a single sitemap and that's it, but post-Panda, should I do anything different?
-
Maybe even a robots.txt for a particular page like "advanced catalog" for ecommerce sites.
-
Every page of your site that you wish to be indexed should be included in the sitemap you submit to search engines.
If there are pages on your site that are questionable due to duplicate content or thin content issues, those pages should either be removed or have the noindex meta tag added, then excluded from the sitemap.
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
-
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 -
Schema markup concerning category pages on an ecommerce site
We are adding json+ld data to an ecommerce site and myself and one of the other people working on the site are having a minor disagreement on things. What it comes down to is how to mark up the category page. One of us says it needs to be marked up with as an Itempage, https://schema.org/ItemPage The other says it needs to be marked up as products, with multiple product instances in the schema, https://schema.org/Product The main sticking point on the Itemlist is that Itemlist is a child of intangible, so there is a feeling that should be used for things like track listings or other arbitrary data.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LesleyPaone2 -
Creating Redirect Maps -To include PDFs or Not to include PDFs?
When creating a redirect map for a site re-build or domain change, it is necessary to include .PDFs or any other non-HTML URLs? Do PDFs even carry "seo juice" over? When switching CMS, does it even matter to include them? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emilydavidson0 -
Can noindexed pages accrue page authority?
My company's site has a large set of pages (tens of thousands) that have very thin or no content. They typically target a single low-competition keyword (and typically rank very well), but the pages have a very high bounce rate and are definitely hurting our domain's overall rankings via Panda (quality ranking). I'm planning on recommending we noindexed these pages temporarily, and reindex each page as resources are able to fill in content. My question is whether an individual page will be able to accrue any page authority for that target term while noindexed. We DO want to rank for all those terms, just not until we have the content to back it up. However, we're in a pretty competitive space up against domains that have been around a lot longer and have higher domain authorities. Like I said, these pages rank well right now, even with thin content. The worry is if we noindex them while we slowly build out content, will our competitors get the edge on those terms (with their subpar but continually available content)? Do you think Google will give us any credit for having had the page all along, just not always indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | THandorf0 -
Why do people put xml sitemaps in subfolders? Why not just the root? What's the best solution?
Just read this: "The location of a Sitemap file determines the set of URLs that can be included in that Sitemap. A Sitemap file located at http://example.com/catalog/sitemap.xml can include any URLs starting with http://example.com/catalog/ but can not include URLs starting with http://example.com/images/." here: http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#location Yet surely it's better to put the sitemaps at the root so you have:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
(a) http://example.com/sitemap.xml
http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml
http://example.com/sitemap-spongecakes.xml
and so on... OR this kind of approach -
(b) http://example/com/sitemap.xml
http://example.com/sitemap/chocolatecakes.xml and
http://example.com/sitemap/spongecakes.xml I would tend towards (a) rather than (b) - which is the best option? Also, can I keep the structure the same for sitemaps that are subcategories of other sitemaps - for example - for a subcategory of http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml I might create http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes-cherryicing.xml - or should I add a sub folder to turn it into http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes/cherryicing.xml Look forward to reading your comments - Luke0 -
Substantial difference between Number of Indexed Pages and Sitemap Pages
Hey there, I am doing a website audit at the moment. I've notices substantial differences in the number of pages indexed (search console), the number of pages in the sitemap and the number I am getting when I crawl the page with screamingfrog (see below). Would those discrepancies concern you? The website and its rankings seems fine otherwise. Total indexed: 2,360 (Search Consule)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Online-Marketing-Guy
About 2,920 results (Google search "site:example.com")
Sitemap: 1,229 URLs
Screemingfrog Spider: 1,352 URLs Cheers,
Jochen0 -
What Happens If a Hreflang Sitemap Doesn't Include Every Language for Missing Translated Pages?
As we are building a hreflang sitemap for a client, we are correctly implementing the tag across 5 different languages including English. However, the News and Events section was never translated into any of the other four languages. There are also a few pages that were translated into some but not all of the 4 languages. Is it good practice to still list out the individual non-translated pages like on a regular sitemap without a hreflang tag? Should the hreflang sitemap include the hreflang tag with pages that are missing a few language translations (when one or two language translations may be missing)? We are uncertain if this inconsistency would create a problem and we would like some feedback before pushing the hreflang sitemap live.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler0 -
Should I noindex the site search page? It is generating 4% of my organic traffic.
I read about some recommendations to noindex the URL of the site search.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Checked in analytics that site search URL generated about 4% of my total organic search traffic (<2% of sales). My reasoning is that site search may generate duplicated content issues and may prevent the more relevant product or category pages from showing up instead. Would you noindex this page or not? Any thoughts?0