Upgrade old sitemap to a new sitemap index. How to do without danger ?

[ClaudioHeilborn]

Hi MOZ users and friends.

I have a website that have a php template developed by ourselves, and a wordpress blog in /blog/ subdirectory. Actually we have a sitemap.xml file in the root domain where are all the subsections and blog's posts. We upgrade manually the sitemap, once a month, adding the new posts created in the blog.

I want to automate this process , so i created a sitemap index with two sitemaps inside it. One is the old sitemap without the blog's posts and a new one created with "Google XML Sitemap" wordpress plugin, inside the /blog/ subdirectory.

That is, in the sitemap_index.xml file i have:

• Domain.com/sitemap.xml (old sitemap after remove blog posts urls)

• Domain.com/blog/sitemap.xml (auto-updatable sitemap create with Google XML plugin)

Now i have to submit this sitemap index to Google Search Console, but i want to be completely sure about how to do this.

I think that the only that i have to do is delete the old sitemap on Search Console and upload the new sitemap index, is it ok ?

[ClaudioHeilborn]

Hi Patrick thanks for your prompt reply, I consider that´s the best option.

Thanks for your advice!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

If you are combining sitemap indexes under one main sitemap index, then you'd simply just upload your new sitemap index to Search Console. Google will recognize, if implemented correctly, that there are other sitemaps under that main index and crawl accordingly.

Does this answer your question? Let me know - thanks!