Using Sitemap Generator - Good/Bad?
-
Hi all
I recently purchased the full licence of XML Sitemap Generator (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standalone-google-sitemap-generator.html) but have yet used it.
The idea behind this is that I can deploy the package on each large e-commerce website I build and the sitemap will be generated as often as I set it be and the search engines will also be pinged automatically to inform them of the update. No more manual XML sitemap creation for me!
Now it sounds great but I do not know enough about pinging search engines with XML sitemap updates on a regular basis and if this is a good or bad thing?
Can it have any detrimental effect when the sitemap is changing (potentially) every day with new URLs for products being added to the site?
Any thoughts or optinions would be greatly appreciated.
Kris
-
It would certainly not have any impact on the existing rankings and crawl rate. infact the crawl rate would improve
-
Hi Khem
Yes I fully understood your response, thank you.
We always do sumbit a sitemap file for every site we build however we never really update the sitemap from there on, we tend to leave the search engines to crawl the site in order to find new pages or detect pages that have been removed. I assume this is a normal practice for many other developers out there?
We always do a 301 redirect for pages which have been un-published such as old products and categories.
My main concern was actually creating a new sitemap file every day and if this would have any effect on the existing rankings, or crawl rate of the site. I guess not!
Kris
-
Well to answer you question. Yes, you should always use xml sitemap also submit it with search engines. It helps search engines to access all the pages of your websites. If fact you can even tell search engines about your most important and less important pages.
It also enables you to tell Search Engines about the content update frequency so that search engine could crawl those again which you update daily/ weekly.
Furthermore, there is no problem if you update the XML file daily as long as you're not removing pages. However, if you need to remove pages, keep them in sitemap for at least one week and redirect old pages to new ones.
Hope I was able to understand your question and answered properly
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
-
Getting 'Indexed, not submitted in sitemap' for around a third of my site. But these pages ARE in the sitemap we submitted.
As in the title, we have a site with around 40k pages, but around a third of them are showing as "Indexed, not submitted in sitemap" in Google Search Console. We've double-checked the sitemaps we have submitted and the URLs are definitely in the sitemap. Any idea why this might be happening? Example URL with the error: https://www.teacherstoyourhome.co.uk/german-tutor/Egham Sitemap it is located on: https://www.teacherstoyourhome.co.uk/sitemap-subject-locations-surrey.xml
Technical SEO | | TTYH0 -
Is it good practice to use hreflang on pages that have canonicals?
I have a page in English that has both English & Spanish translations on it. It is pulled in from a page generated on another site and I am not able to adjust the CSS to display only one language. Until I can fix this, I have made the English page the canonical for both. Do I still want to use hreflang for English & Spanish pages? What if I do not have a Spanish page at all. I assume (from what I've read) I should not have an hreflang on the English page. Is this correct? Thank you in advance.
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
Hi! I'm wondering whether for keyword SEO - a url should be www.salshoes.com/shoes/mens/day-wear (so with a few parent categories) or www.salshoes.com/shoes-mens-day-wear is ok for on page optimization?
Hi! I'm wondering whether for keyword SEO - a url should be www.salshoes.com/shoes/mens/day-wear (so with a few parent categories) or www.salshoes.com/shoes-mens-day-wear is ok for on page optimization? Hi! I'm wondering whether for keyword SEO - a url should be www.salshoes.com/shoes/mens/day-wear (so with a few parent categories) or www.salshoes.com/shoes-mens-day-wear is ok for on page optimization?
Technical SEO | | SalSantaCruz0 -
I want to resubmit sitemap
I am doing major changes in my website some of my old url pages i don't want them to be indexed or submitted in site map some of other old pages i want to keep them and there is new pages any one can give me hints what should i do also I have thousands of pages on my website and I don't want to submit all my pages i want to submit best pages to google in sitemap that why i want to resubmit new site maps
Technical SEO | | Jamalon0 -
Are sitewide links bad for SEO?
I have 11 real estate sites and have had links from one to another for about 7 years but someone just suggested me to take them all out because I might get penalized or affected by penguin. My main site was affected on July of 2012 and organic visits have dropped 43%...I've been working on many aspects of my SEO but it's been difficult to come back. Any suggestions are very welcome, thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | mbulox0 -
Why is my site going from bad to worse in the SERPS?
I've been having issues ranking for the key word kayak fishing. At one point a few months ago I managed to get my site www.yakangler.com to page 2 but have since fallen back to page 20+. I thought it was because of keyword stuffing or over optimization so I made some tweaks to my home page and started to see a small daily rise but stopped at page 19. I have since slipped back to the top of page 24... What am I doing wrong? I don't employ any blackhat linking, I know I have some W3C validation errors on my home page "many caused by the facebook like button". Any ideas on how to improve my SERPS would be greatly appreciated. The most frustrating thing is comparing my site to the top Google searches for that key word... I should be doing fine definitely not page 24! Much gratitude in advance for any help you can offer!
Technical SEO | | mr_w0 -
Maximum <title>length - use full or shorten?</title>
I have a Title on a page that has more than 70 chars in it, and I also have to include the page type and brand in the title. page type: Type page header: This is the page title of the long title and I need to add more content brand: Brand Is it better to concanenate the title server-side and use a .. instead, like this? Type: This is the page title of the long title and I need to.. | Brand Or, should I put the full Title of the page so that the keywords are available for Google? example, Type: This is the page title of the long title and I need to add more content | Brand I'm trying to keep to the 70 char limit for Google. Which solution is the more ideal situation? Thanks all jonathan
Technical SEO | | JDatSB0 -
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.
Technical SEO | | askotzko0