Why does the crawl report say I should have meta description and title tags in my xml files?
-
Just had my first crawl report today which has been very useful in finding missing and duplicated title tags and meta descriptions but it has flagged up the fact that my xml files are missing these. Surely non HTML documents shouldn't have them (or need them) so why are they showing up in the report?
-
TBH it's a while ago I heard it and can't remember which site it was on. I've subscribed to so many SEO forums!!
Happy to get fresh advice on the matter as I have no particular desire to have the sitemaps crawlable or visible on the site. What are your feelings about ROR, RSS and OPML sitemaps?
-
Hi Pandy,
Could you give me a heads up on the resource that says you should link to your sitemap.xml? Interested in reading that
In my experience, search engines expect the sitemap to be at www.root.com/sitemap.xml so there would be no need to link to it from your site.
-
Thanks Yannick.
The site does link to sitemaps in XML, RSS, OPML, Text and HTML formats. This has been advised not for Google but for other search engines and bots which may be crawling the site. There are also links to RSS feeds which are showing in the report as well.
Highland - the XML files are generated by a third party so I would hope they are returning proper application type! The browser certainly renders them as XML.
-
Highland has a good suggestion. Otherwise:
You might have found a bug there
There shouldn't be any title tags and description tags in XML files. So I suggest you submit it as a bug.Other thought that comes up: why does the crawler find XML files? That (probably?) means that you're linking to those files on your site? Which isn't really necessary
You only need to link to it in your robots.txt file or submit it to Google Webmaster Tools. -
Are your XML files returning a proper application type? If it's being shown as "text/html" it's possible the bot got confused.
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
-
What is the best way to add a noindex./nofollow meta tags to tags in a blog?
Could anyone tell me the best way to add noindex./nofollow meta tags as IÂ have around 12 duplicate tags in a blog. I have the Yoast SEO plugin - unpaid version.
Moz Pro | | SEM_at_Lees0 -
H1 tag question
I am currently going through the process of optimizing my pages for my given keywords. Most of my pages are receiving an A grading from the Moz page checker, with keywords being found in all elements expect for the H1 tag. For certain pages I have not used a H1 tag, the pages title has been incorporated into the image on the top of the page. This is difficult to explain without showing you so i will use one of my pages to explain, the page is http://www.ecobode.co.uk/garden-uses-3/garden-gym/. The keyword for this page is garden gym, it is found multiple times in the content, URL and other on page elements expect for the H1 tag as I don't have one. The title resides in the image, I know how important H1 tags are but I don't know how I can incorporate into this page. Does anyone have any ideas how I can incorporate the H1 tag into this page? Kind Regards, Tom
Moz Pro | | Tmgale0 -
Find a 4xx or 5xx link referenced in an SEO Crawl Report
So I just got the Crawl Diagnostics report for a client site and it came back with a number of 4xx errors and even 1 5xx error. Â So while I can find the URL that has the problem, I cannot find the pages that have the links pointing to these non-existent or problematic pages. Â Normally I would just search the database for the site, but in this case I don't have access to it as the site is on a proprietary platform with no access other than to the CMS. Â Is there anyway to get the linking URL from the report? Â Thanks!
Moz Pro | | farlandlee0 -
Title missing or empty on non-html downloadable files?
My site, www.cnccookbook.com, has lots of links for downloading files. Â These files are not html and they don't have .htm or .html extensions. Â So why does SEOMoz flag them for missing titles? Â Is there some other way these files should be handled for better SEO?
Moz Pro | | CNCCookbook0 -
Help with duplicate title tags?
I was looking in Google webmaster tools and it says I have 95 duplicate title tags for my site Noah's Dad. When I look through the list it appears the pages with duplicate title tags are some of my category pages, archive pages, and some author pages... Not sure if you guys can use some of the tools to see what is actually showing up duplicate or  not, and if you need more info just let me know. But I wanted to see if this is something I should be concerned with? Should WMT also say 0 in duplicate content? It seems like when I started my blog I was told no to be conceded with this sort of stuff in gwmt. Anyways...I just wanted to see what you guys think. (By the way, is there any way to tell what this duplicate content is having (or has had) on my SERP results? Thanks.
Moz Pro | | NoahsDad0 -
Can I exclude pages from my Crawl Diagnostics?
Right now my crawl diagnostic information is being skewed because it's including the onsite search from my website. Is there a way to remove certain pages like search from the errors and warnings of the crawl diagnostic? My search pages are coming up as: Long URL Title Element Too Long Missing Meta Description Blocked by meta-robots (Which is how I want it) Rel Canonical Here is what the crawl diagnostic thinks my page URL looks like: website.com/search/gutter%25252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525 252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252 525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525 252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252 52525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252Bcleaning/ Thank you, Jonathan
Moz Pro | | JonathanGoodman0 -
Meta description tag in rss xml file?
The SEOmoz crawl diagnostic tool is complaining that I'm missing a meta description tag from a file that is an RSS xml file. In my <channel>section I do have a <description>tag. Is this a bug in the SEOmoz tool or do I need to add another tag to satisify the warning?</description></channel>
Moz Pro | | scanlin0 -
Crawl test. Bot crawled only 200 or so links when it should have crawled thousands
Hi everyone, I just recieved my crawl test report and its only given me 200 or so URL's when my site has thousands, any thoughts?
Moz Pro | | Ev840