Editing A Sitemap
-
Would there be any positive effect from editing a site map down to a more curated list of pages that perform, or that we hope they begin to perform, in organic search?
A site I work with has a sitemap with about 20,000 pages that is automatically created out of a Drupal plugin.
Of those pages, only about 10% really produce out of search. There are old sections of the site that are thin, obsolete, discontinued and/or noindexed that are still on the sitemap.
For instance, would it focus Google's crawl budget more efficiently or have some other effect?
Your thoughts? Thanks! Best... Darcy
-
Hi Darcy
Looking at what has been mentioned previously I would agree with the train of thought that a more focussed sitemap would generally be advantageous.
Andrew
-
Hi Dmitrii,
Always fun to watch Matt's Greatest Hits, in this example the value of making things better.
I guess the make better or delete seems super black and white to me.
Economically, who is able to make thousands of pages dramatically better with compelling original content? So, instead, the only other option is apparently radical elective surgery and massive amputation? I guess I'd choose the chemo first and don't really see what the downside is for noindex/follow and exclude from the sitemap.
Anyway, thanks again! Best... Darcy
-
- I really read the above linked post differently than Google saying "just delete it."
Well, here is a video from Matt Cutts about thin content. In this particular video he's talking about websites, which already took hit for thin content, but in your case it's the same, since you're trying to prevent it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3-obcXkyA4&t=322So, there are two options he is talking about: delete or make it better. From your previous responses I understand that making it better is not an option, so there is only one option left
As for link juice thorough those pages. If those pages have good amount of links, traffic and are quite popular on your website, then surely DON'T delete them, but rather make them better. However, I understood that those pages are not popular or have much traffic, so, option two
-
Hi Thomas,
Thanks for the message.
To answer your question, part of the reason is link juice via a noindex/follow and then there are some pages that serve a very very narrow content purpose, but have absolutely no life in search.
All things being equal, do you think a smaller, more focused, sitemap is generally an advantage? In the extreme and on other sites I've seen sitemaps with noindexed pages on them.
Thanks... Darcy
-
Thanks for the suggestion, Andrew.
With setting priority or not in a sitemap, do you think a smaller, more focused, sitemap is generally an advantage?
Thanks... Darcy
-
Thomas & Dmitrii,
Thanks for the message. With all do respect, I really read the above linked post differently than Google saying "just delete it."
Also, I don't see how deleting it preserves whatever link juice those pages had, as opposed to a "noindex, follow" and taking them out of the sitemap.
Finally, I don't necessarily equate all of Google's suggestions as synonymous with a "for best effect in search." I assume their suggestions mean, "it's best for Google if you..."
Thanks, again!
Best... Darcy
-
You misunderstand the meaning of that article.
"...that when you do block thin or bad content, Google prefers when you use the noindex over 404ing the page..."
They are talking about the walk around the problem of blocking pages INSTEAD of removing them.
So, if for whatever reason you don't want to delete a page and just put a 404 status on it, it's worse than putting noindex on it. Basically, what they're saying is:
- if you have thin content, DELETE it;
- if for whatever reason you don't want to delete it, put NOINDEX on it.
P.S. My suggestion still stays the same. Delete all bad content and, if you really want, put 410 gone status for that deleted content for Google to understand immediately that those pages are deleted forever, not inaccessible by mistake or something.
Hope this makes sense
.
-
Darcy,
Whilst noindex would be a good solution, if the page has no benefit why would you noindex instead of deleting it?
-
Dmitrii & Thomas,
Thanks for your thoughts.
Removal would be one way to go. I note with some interest this post:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-block-thin-content-use-noindex-over-404s-21011.html
According to that, removal would be the third thing after making it better and noindexing.
With thousands of pages, making it better is not really an option.
Best... Darcy
-
Hi Darcy
I don't know about scaling the sitemap down but you could make use of an area of the sitemap to optimise and make it a crawl more efficient.
The area in question is the Priority area that basically tells the search engines which pages on your site are the most important. The theory is that pages with a higher priority (say 100%) are more likely to get indexed by the search engines than pages with a lower priority of say (10%), although not everyone in the industry agrees.
-
"There are old sections of the site that are thin, obsolete, discontinued and/or noindexed that are still on the sitemap."
Why not remove these from the site?
I personally believe that it'll have a positive impact, as you're submitting this sitemap to Google, you're giving it a way of going through your whole site, so why would you give it low quality pages. You want to provide Google (and your users) the best possible experience, so if you've got out of date pages, update them or if they're not relevant delete them, a user who lands on this page anyway would just bounce because it's not relevant anymore.
If these out of date pages can't be found by crawling, then 100% it's best to craft your sitemap to show the best pages.
-
hi there.
Of those pages, only about 10% really produce out of search. There are old sections of the site that are thin, obsolete, discontinued and/or noindexed that are still on the sitemap.
Have you considered removing those pages/sections, rather than altering the sitemap? It would make more sense I think.
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
-
Only a fraction of the sitemap get indexed
I have a large international website. The content is subdivided in 80 countries, with largely the same content all in English. The URL structure is: https://www.baumewatches.com/XX/page (where XX is the country code)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lvet
Language annotations hreflang seem to be set up properly In the Google Search Console I registered: https://www.baumewatches.com the 80 instances of https://www.baumewatches.com/XX in order to geo target the directories for each country I have declared a single global sitemap for https://www.baumewatches.com (https://www.baumewatches.com/sitemap_index.xml structured in a hierarchical way) The problem is that the site has been online already for more than 8 months and only 15% of the sitemap URLs have been indexed, with no signs of new indexations in the last 3 months. I cannot think about a solution for this.0 -
How long after https migration that google shows in search console new sitemap being indexed?
We migrated 4 days ago to https and followed best practices..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
In search console now still 80% of our sitemaps appear as "pending" and among those sitemaps that were processed only less than 1% of submitted pages appear as indexed? Is this normal ?
How long does it take for google to index pages from sitemap?
Before https migration nearly all our pages were indexed and I see in the crawler stats that google has crawled a number of pages each day after migration that corresponds to number of submitted pages in sitemap. Sitemap and crawler stats show no errors.0 -
Sitemap Query
I've decided to write my own sitemap because frankly, the automated ones pull all kinds of out of I don't know where. So to get around that, manual it is. But I have some products appear in various categories, should I still list every product in each category in the sitemap, regardless of some being duplicates, or should I choose the most relevant category and list them there? I do have a canonical URL extension which should resolve any duplicate content I have.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Sitemap and content question
This is our primary sitemap https://www.samhillbands.com/sitemaps/sitemap.xml We have a about 750 location based URL's that aren't currently linked anywhere on the site. https://www.samhillbands.com/sitemaps/locations.xml Google is indexing most of the URL because we submitted the locations sitemap directly for indexing. Thoughts on that? Should we just create a page that contains all of the location links and make it live on the site? Should we remove the locations sitemap from separate indexing...because of duplicate content? # Sitemap Type Processed Issues Items Submitted Indexed --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- 1 /sitemaps/locations.xml Sitemap May 10, 2016 - Web 771 648 2 /sitemaps/sitemap.xml Sitemap index May 8, 2016 - Web 862 730
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianvest0 -
Need some help/input about my Joomla sitemap created by XMap
Here is my current sitemap for my site http://www.yakangler.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&view=xml&tmpl=component&id=1 I have some questions about it's current settings. I have a component called JReviews that xmap produces a separate link for each category. ex: http://www.yakangler.com/fishing-kayak-review/265-2013-hobie-mirage-adventure-island 2014-09-03T20:46:25Z monthly 0.4 http://www.yakangler.com/fishing-kayak-review/266-2012-wilderness-systems-tarpon-140 2014-06-03T15:49:00Z monthly 0.4
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mr_w
http://www.yakangler.com/fishing-kayak-review/343-wilderness-systems-tarpon-120-ultralite 2013-11-25T06:39:05Z monthly 0.4 Where as my other articles are only linked by the content category. ex: http://www.yakangler.com/news monthly 0.4
http://www.yakangler.com/tournaments monthly 0.4
http://www.yakangler.com/kayak-events monthly 0.4
http://www.yakangler.com/spotlight monthly 0.4 Which option is better?0 -
Bing Webmaster Tools failed to reach sitemap any suggestions?
My sitemap has been submitted to Bing webmaster tools well over a year ago and I have never had any problems. Starting last week it showed failed, for some reason it can't reach it. I have resubmitted several times and it fails every time. I can go to the url with no problems, and Google Webmaster Tools does not have any problems. We have made no changes in over a year to how the sitemap is made and submitted. Anyone have any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Do image sitemaps provide value for non e-commerce sites?
Is it worth putting together an image sitemap to submit to Google if you're not an e-commerce site? Also, if you're using a CDN like Amazon Web Services (cloudfront), can you even submit an image sitemap? According to Google you need to verify your CDN in webmaster tools if you're going to do so. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/178636?hl=en
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kking41201 -
Is Sitemap Issue Causing Duplicate Content & Unindexed Pages on Google?
On July 10th my site was migrated from Drupal to Google. The site contains approximately 400 pages. 301 permanent redirects were used. The site contains maybe 50 pages of new content. Many of the new pages have not been indexed and many pages show as duplicate content. Is it possible that there is a site map issue that is causing this problem? My developer believes the map is formatted correctly, but I am not convinced. The sitemap address is http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/page-sitemap.xml [^] I am completely non technical so if anyone could take a brief look I would appreciate it immensely. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan | |0