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
-
International XML Sitemaps - Standalone, or Integrate into Existing XML Sitemap?
Hi there, We understand that hreflang tagging can be incorporated into an existing XML sitemap. That said, is there any inherent issue with having two sitemaps - your regular XML sitemap plus an international XML sitemap which lists off many of the same URLs as your original XML sitemap? For example, one of our clients has an XML sitemap file they don't want to have to edit, but we want to implement international hreflang xml sitemaps for them. Can we add an "English" XML sitemap with the proper hreflang tagging even though this new sitemap contains many duplicates as the existing XML sitemap file? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
HTML or XML sitemap - benefits
Hi all, Can I use only HTML sitemap or I should use both versions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormar
How much I would lose in case when I would lose only HTML sitemap, without XML sitemap? Thank you.0 -
Best Sitemap Generator XML
Hello Everyone, Can Anyone Suggest best Site map Generator Software??
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ieplnupur0 -
GWT, Editing URL Parameters for Ecommerce Features
I have had the setting of "let googlebot decide" on managing my URL parameters on an Ecommerce site in Magento. The products I sell come in different sizes and colors and finishes etc. These parameters are showing up in Google Webmaster Tools and set for "let googlebot decide". Some of them have as many as 8 million urls monitored. I changed the editing option to clam these parameters as "narrow searches", but still left the option to "let googlebot decide" (versus block urls). Will blocking these erroneous urls serve any benefit? Does blocking these help with the crawl/seo?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nat88han0 -
Should we be showing last modified date for each page in our sitemap?
We're not currently displaying the last modified date in our sitemap, e.g.: <url><loc>http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/about-our-charity</loc></url> Are their any advantages to including this data? One benefit that occurred to us is that it will enable Google to determine which pages have fresh content and which are therefore worth crawling, helping Google index beneficial changes quicker. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SOS_Children1 -
I have two sitemaps which partly duplicate - one is blocked by robots.txt but can't figure out why!
Hi, I've just found two sitemaps - one of them is .php and represents part of the site structure on the website. The second is a .txt file which lists every page on the website. The .txt file is blocked via robots exclusion protocol (which doesn't appear to be very logical as it's the only full sitemap). Any ideas why a developer might have done that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Submitting URLs multiple times in different sitemaps
We have a very dynamic site, with a large number of pages. We use a sitemap index file, that points to several smaller sitemap files. The question is: Would there be any issue if we include the same URL in multiple sitemap files? Scenario: URL1 appears on sitemap1. 2 weeks later, the page at URL1 changes and we'd like to update it on a sitemap. Would it be acceptable to add URL1 as an entry in sitemap2? Would there be any issues with the same URL appearing multiple times? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | msquare0 -
What is the best method for segmenting HTML sitemaps?
Sitemaps create a Table of Contents for web crawlers and users alike. Understanding how PageRank is passed, HTML sitemaps play a critical role in how Googlebot and other crawlers spider and catalog content. I get asked this question a lot and, in most cases, it's easy to categorize sitemaps and create 2-3 category-based maps that can be linked to from the global footer. However, what do you do when a client has 40 categories with 200+ pages of content under each category? How do you segment your HTML sitemap in a case like this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevewiideman0