Do we need to manually submit a sitemap every time, or can we host it on our site as /sitemap and Google will see & crawl it?
-
I realized we don't have a sitemap in place, so we're going to get one built. Once we do, I'll submit it manually to Google via Webmaster tools.
However, we have a very dynamic site with content constantly being added. Will I need to keep manually re-submitting the sitemap to Google? Or could we have the continually updating sitemap live on our site at /sitemap and the crawlers will just pick it up from there? I noticed this is what SEOmoz does at http://www.seomoz.org/sitemap.
-
Thanks, Ryan. I was confusing those.
To execute the sitemap index, would I just point the crawlers to the index? Do you have any links to overviews of how to set that up?
-
There are also scripts you can purchase for very little cost and have them install it for you on your server and set up a cron job to have your sitemap run automatically each week and ping the search engines to find your sitemap.
One such service is at xml-sitemaps.com - they can install it for you and set up the cron job as well.
Just make sure you are on a good server that can handle the script if your website is large.
-
I think you may be getting xml sitemaps confused with sitemap pages. Your xml sitemap should live at /sitemap.xml as Alan pointed out. The seomoz and other sites that have a /sitemap page is for different purposes. Its not your xml file, its a "topical guide" to your website and all the major sections of your site.
Remember that you can also create a xml sitemap index if you need to have different sitemaps (video, news, content) that houses all the different xml sitemaps underneath it.
-
Typically I use /sitemap.xml
I dont think it matters what you call it, as long as its submitted to Google webmaster tools.
Check out sitemaps.org for more info on how to create a quality sitemap
-
Great, thanks!
Should we also have it live at /sitemap, as SEOmoz does?
-
Yes they will pick it up, you can put the address in your robots.txt file,
http://thatsit.com.au/robots.txt
then you dont need to submit it and all search engines will find it.
Keeep it up todate, free from 404's, 301's all urls should be status code 200, and keep it accurate. Bing for one will igniore it if it is not clean and acurate, they allow only a couple of percent error rate.
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
-
Can you confirm legitimate Google Bot traffic?
We use Cloudflare as a firewall. I noticed a significant number of blocks of bot traffic. One of the things they do is try to block bad bot traffic. But it seems they are mistakenly blocking Google Bot traffic. If you use Cloudflare, you may want to look into this as well. Also, can you confirm if the following IPs are for legitimate Google Bots? 66.249.79.88
Technical SEO | | akin67
66.249.79.65
66.249.79.80 66.249.79.76 Thanks,1 -
Hosting Sites under same IP / subdomain usage?
Hello everyone! The company I am working for is working on selling websites templates to clients in the near future. In terms of SEO purposes, would it be detrimental for our clients if we hosted all of these sites under the same server/IP? Also, in the past we've sold sites under a domain we own, adding them on as a subdomain. For example, we would own yourflowers.com, and if Mark's Flowers wanted a site, we would give him: marksflowers.yourflowers.com These sites are going to be the same niche as we are industry specific (example would be, we sell website templates specifically designed for flower shops around the United States). I want the best possible SEO experience for our clients and I believe using subdomains and hosting under the same server IP can be detrimental, but I wanted to see what the Moz community thinks of this. Any feedback is appreciated! Thanks
Technical SEO | | KathleenDC0 -
Webmasters tools - Need to update every time you add a new product/page to an ecommerce
Hi guys, I run an ecommere store and we are constantly receiving and uploading new products. Do we need to update the sitemap every time we upload a product? Google Webmasters tools shows that the number of URLs received is higher than the number of indexed URLs. They should match right? Thanks and regards
Technical SEO | | footd0 -
WordPress - How to stop both http:// and https:// pages being indexed?
Just published a static page 2 days ago on WordPress site but noticed that Google has indexed both http:// and https:// url's. Usually I only get http:// indexed though. Could anyone please explain why this may have happened and how I can fix? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Clicksjim1 -
Why doesn't SEOmoz see internal/external links on my site?
My SEOmoz analysis that my site contains neither external or internal lnks. I have used other tools and they have all seen the internal and external links on the pages. There aren't many but they are there. Why isn't SEOmoz seeing them?
Technical SEO | | iain0 -
Google is indexing proxy (mirror) site.
We moved the site to a new hosting. Previously the site used Godaddy Windows Hosting with white domain masking. After moving the site we just mirrored the site. We have to use mirrored domain for PPC campaigns because it mirrored site contains true BRAND name and there is better conversion with that domain plus all trade marked keywords are approved for mirrored domain. Robots.txt User-agent: * Host: www.hermitagejewelers.com Disallow: /Bin Disallow: /css www.hermitagejewelers.com is the main domain. Mirror site is www.ermitagejewelers.com (Without the "H" at the beginning) Most of the keywords are now picked up by mirror site. I have not noticed any major changes in ranking except that it ranks for mirror site. We updated the sitemap. Website is designed very poorly (not by us). Also, we submitted the change address request for ermitagejewelers to hermitagejewelers in webmasters. Please let me know any advice to fix that problem. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | MaxRuso1 -
Adding Google +1 To My Site
This may seem like a silly question, but I had my site designed by a third party and I don't know how to find this info. I want to add Google +1 button to my site. I've already added the script that makes it work in my , but don't know how to add the to the part of my site I'd like the icon to appear. If you take a look at my site, http://www.youdrivethesuccess.com/, you will see the twitter and facebook icons that follow you around the site in the top right of the page. I'd like to drop in the +1 right next to them, but I don't know how to get to it. How do I access this on the server? What section of my FTP do these lil icons live? A folder? Any direction is greatly appreciated...thanks.
Technical SEO | | brentmitchell0 -
Some site pages are removed from Google Index
Hello, Some pages of my clients website are removed from Google Index. We were in top 10 position for some keywords but now I cannot find those pages neither in top 1000. Any idea what to do in order to get these pages back? thank you
Technical SEO | | besartbajrami0