Sitemap Size effect SEO
-
So I've noticed that the sitemap I use has a capacity of 4500 URLs, but my website is much larger. Is it worth paying for a commercial sitemap that encompasses my entire site?
I also notice that of the 4500 URLs which have been submitted, only 104 are indexed. Is this normal, if not, why is the index rate so low?
-
As Thomas said, 50k is the max but you can also have an index file with multiple sitemaps within it so you can have lots more if needed. A couple of things I would add.
- Manual crawling is fine but remember, that also means that pages that can't be crawled will be excluded from the sitemap which defeats the purpose of the sitemap
- As for why the indexation levels are so low, the first thing I would check is if everything in the sitemap is a 200 response. Make sure there aren't any redirects or 404s otherwise Google may decide not to trust the sitemap.
I hope this helps
-
Sitemaps can go up to 50,000 urls, so 4500 isn't an issue for Google to handle.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/183668?hl=en
Just to add on to Bernadette's post, this section "If your website's CMS can't do that, then I would recommend crawling the website yourself and updating the sitemap file. However, keep in mind that if you do it manually then you'll need to update it whenever you add or remove a page on the website." You can use something like Screaming Frog for this if you were wondering what software to use. It's a very common tool for an SEO to use, so hopefully you'll have it to save purchasing a license to something else.
-
Spacecollective, your website's sitemap file(s) don't have any direct impact on search engine rankings. If you have a large website with over 4500 URLs, then most likely you're using content management system (CMS) that "should" be able to create a sitemap file.
If your website's CMS can't do that, then I would recommend crawling the website yourself and updating the sitemap file. However, keep in mind that if you do it manually then you'll need to update it whenever you add or remove a page on the website.
Typically, if your navigational structure is set up in a way that all pages on the website can be crawled via links on the site, you generally shouldn't have anything to worry about.
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
-
Adding your sitemap to robots.txt
Hi everyone, Best practice question: When adding your sitemap to your robots.txt file, do you add the whole sitemap at once or do you add different subcategories (products, posts, categories,..) separately? I'm very curious to hear your thoughts!
Technical SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE0 -
Is Removing Breadcrumbs Detrimental for SEO?
We have full navigational breadcrumbs on our site for the menu and the brand menu. i.e. Home > Clothing > Jackets Brand > Brand Name > Brand Jackets There's been talk of removing this and having it like Chico's does, where on item pages they just have a link at the top to previous category (i.e. you're on a shirt product page and at the top it says "Back to Tops" instead of listing Home > Clothing > Tops) Is doing something like this detrimental to SEO? From what I've read Breadcrumbs are for user experience but I just want to be sure.
Technical SEO | | AliMac260 -
Sitemaps: Good Image And Video Sitemap Generators
Hello, We are trying to update our sitemap. We have currently updated our XML and HTML sitemaps but would like to have an image and video sitemap also. Can anyone recommend a good image and video sitemap generator? Kind regards, | Deeana Radley Web Designer & SEO Assistant Phone: 01702 460047 Email: dee@solopress.com Google+: +DeeanaRadley Twitter: @DeeanaRadley |
Technical SEO | | SolopressPrint0 -
Is there a suggested limit to the amount of links on a sitemap?
Currently, I have an error on my moz dashboard indicating there are too many links on one of my pages. That page is the sitemap. It was my understanding all internal pages should be linked to the sitemap. Can any mozzers help clarify the best practice here? Thanks, Clayton
Technical SEO | | JorgeUmana0 -
Benefits to having an HTML sitemap?
We are currently migrating our site to a new CMS and in part of this migration I'm getting push-back from my development team regarding the HTML sitemap. We have a very large news site with 10s of thousands of pages. We currently have an HTML sitemap that greatly helps with distributing PR to article pages, but is not geared towards the user. The dev team doesn't see the benefit to recreating the HTML sitemap despite my assurance that we don't want to lose all these internal links since removing 1000s of links could have a negative impact on our Domain Authority. Should I give in and concede the HTML sitemap since we have an XML one? Or am I right that we don't want to get rid of it?
Technical SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Country domain: Seo for other languages
Hi, I have an italian domain (.it) for an italian hotel, it is an old authoritative domain (1997) and it is well optimized for the keywords that include the city the hotel is in, now the page is decently positioned in Google Italy. There are many problems to have the same rank for German version (in google.de, google.at). The German version is in the /de folder. The hotel has another .com domain, much less authoritative (2007), in a German server, but it was and is only a simple redirect 301 (by code) to the German version in the .it domain. (obviously the rank for this domain is almost nonexistent). Do you have any suggestion? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | depi0 -
Seo on a dk site
hi my client has asked if we can seo their dk site , my question is does all link building and article submission have to be in danish
Technical SEO | | Westernoriental0 -
Seo impact for template change
Hi, If you change a template (wordpress, joomla cms..) without changing information organization..(urls..) Does this can have an impact on your serp ? Tks a lot ...
Technical SEO | | mozllo0