Sitemap Update Frequency?
-
Hello,
My question today is regarding sitemaps. I'm often confused by this and because I am a bit obsessive I believe I may be giving myself more work than needed..
Basically my question is, do I need to update and/or re-generate my sitemap every time I make a change to the site? I mean, I must have to if I add a page, correct? And so in Google's Webmaster Tools, do I just delete the current sitemap and re-upload a new one for Google to crawl?
Is it possible to overdo this?
Any sitemap suggestions would be fantastic. I feel like there's been a few weeks where I've updated the sitemap daily and re-submitted it and I worry that might be hurting my site.
Thanks!
-
appreciate the input thank you. makes sense - throw the new sitemap on the server and let it happen. will do
thanks again all
-
Also something to consider is that you don't need to re-submit the sitemap ever whilst your sitemap is in the same location and has the same title it always did. Google will on a regular basis fetch that sitemap without resubmitting.
I would say update the sitemap if you've a new page or deleted it - but its not a huge issue really if you are out by a day or 14 - unless your site is very busy with lots of visitors it's not that important to google, also I find they prefer natural crawling and finding than being told there is one new page - this said a whole section change is definitely worth updating it.
-
That was exactly the answer I was looking for and makes perfect sense. I had a feeling I might be working too hard in that regard.
Thanks again!
-
As far as when to submit sitemaps, you do not "need" to even submit one. After your initial sitemap is submitted, as long as you have a strong interlinking structure in place, your new pages should be crawled. Submitting a sitemap when you add new pages is more or less a "heads-up" to Google saying, "I added new pages here... you should crawl them when you have time."
Now, if you remove pages from your site, you should also make sure that your sitemap reflects these changes. If you do not, you will start to get 404 errors in Google Webmaster Tools.
I don't think you can overdo it; however, you would probably make less work for yourself if you only resubmitted when you are 100% sure you actually need to.
Does that make sense?
Mike
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
-
We're considering making notable changes to our website's navigation. Other than 301 redirects from old pages to new, what do I need to consider with this type of move or update?
We would like to make some navigation changes to our website: www.NetGainIT.com, specifically to the services section. I know that I will need a list of 301 redirects if I do not plan on keeping certain pages, but what else do I need to consider?
Web Design | | NetGainTech0 -
How important is it to update from a tabular lay-out to a div-layout?
Mozzers, As the title of this question describes I'm am wondering how important it is that your code has to be up to date for SEO and UX use. One of my sites was build in 2007 and updates in 2010 (new images / color) but my code hasn't changed that much over te years so the site still uses tables for lay-out purposes in stead of divs. Now how important is it to update this and how much risk will this have to my current rankings? For most of my main keywords I rank number 1 in Google (NL). I can't afford to lose those rankings but if an outdated code will get me into trouble I might have to update this anyway and then rather do it sooner then later. Any suggestions on this subject? regards Jarno
Web Design | | JarnoNijzing0 -
Best way to indicate multiple Lang/Locales for a site in the sitemap
So here is a question that may be obvious but wondering if there is some nuance here that I may be missing. Question: Consider an ecommerce site that has multiple sites around the world but are all variations of the same thing just in different languages. Now lets say some of these exist on just a normal .com page while others exist on different ccTLD's. When you build out the XML Sitemap for these sites, especially the ones on the other ccTLD's, we want to ensure that using <loc>http://www.example.co.uk/en_GB/"</loc> <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
Web Design | | DRSearchEngOpt
hreflang="en-AU"
href="http://www.example.com.AU/en_AU/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="en-NZ"
href="http://www.example.co.NZ/en_NZ/"
/> Would be the correct way of doing this. I know I have to change this for each different ccTLD but it just looks weird when you start putting about 10-15 different language locale variations as alternate links. I guess I am just looking for a bit of re-affirmation I am doing this right.</xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br> Thanks!0 -
Nav / Sitemap Question. Using a "services" page vs just linking directly to individual service page?
Okay, so our company offers video production, web design, and web marketing services. While we do offer these services individually, our goal is to get our clients to integrate these services together. Our nav is currently like so : home - about - video - web design - web marketing - blog - contact Now I've seen businesses and agencies also use a nav with a "services" button instead of listing out their service offerings (if they have more than 1, like us). The services button usually links to a category page or has a drop down with links to the company's individual services. I'm wondering if there is any benefit to having a main services page like this and linking to the individual pages off of it (video ,web design, marketing, etc). Or if we should just keep it the way we have it now (since we've already got some page authority on the individual service pages). I know this may not be the most important aspect of our site and we may be over-thinking it but any thoughts/ideas would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Web Design | | RenderPerfect0 -
Unable to submit sitemap in GWM.. Error
I recently published new EMD and installed WP on their. Now i installed the Plugin called Yoast <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> and XML Sitemap. Now whenever i am trying to submit sitemap it shows "URL restricted by robots.txt" but you can see my robots file line written below: User-agent: *
Web Design | | xplodeguru
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /wp-admin/ But still it is showing same error.. i deactivate plugin and resubmit the sitemap but still no luck.. please help0 -
Alternatives to Wordpress for updating content of a static html site
I have a static html site which I cannot update myself. What solutions/ programs would you recommend for gaining the ability to update it myself? I'm reluctant to switch to WordPress because the sites that use any CMS that are hosted by my web hosting company get routinely hacked. Thank you!
Web Design | | translate0 -
Mobile Sitemap for Site with Media Queries
I'm doing SEO for a site. It uses Media Queries and the CSS to automatically resize the site for the screen size in use. I.e. the site detects the screen size of say an iPhone and the CSS knows which elements to hide for that screen size and still make it look good. This is great because it will automatically cut down the content to display nicely on small screens - obviating the need for a separate mobile site. What kind of sitemap should be generated since the urls are for desktop and mobile use? Yoast (sweet SEO) said it should have both regular and mobile style sitemap to get both the regular and mobile bots to visit, but didn't elaborate on how that sitemap should look. Do you have a recommendation for how exactly the sitemap should look? Should the sitemap have the urls all twice, i.e. once regular and once with the mobile indicator?
Web Design | | GregoryHaze1 -
XML Sitemap that updates daily/weekly?
Hi, I have a sitemap on my site, that updates but it isn't a XML sitemap. See here: http://www.designerboutique-online.com/sitemap/ I have used some free software to crawl the site and create a sitemap of pages, however I think that if I were to upload the sitemap, it would be out of date as soon as I listed new products on the site, so would need to rerun it. Does anyone know how I can get this to refresh daily or weekly? Or any software that can do it? I have a web firm that are willing to do one, but our relationship is at an all time low and I don't want to hand over £200 for them to do one. Anyone with any ideas or advice? Thanks Will
Web Design | | WillBlackburn0