Should I submit a sitemap for a site with dynamic pages?
-
I have a coupon website (http://couponeasy.com)
Being a coupon website, my content is always keeps changing (as new coupons are added and expired deals are removed) automatically.I wish to create a sitemap but I realised that there is not much point in creating a sitemap for all pages as they will be removed sooner or later and/or are canonical.
I have about 8-9 pages which are static and hence I can include them in sitemap.
Now the question is....
If I create the sitemap for these 9 pages and submit it to google webmaster, will the google crawlers stop indexing other pages?
NOTE: I need to create the sitemap for getting expanded sitelinks.
-
Hi Anuj -
I think you are operating from a very false assumption that is going to hurt your organic traffic (I suspect it has already).
The XML sitemap is one of the the very best ways to tell the search engines about new content on your website. Therefore, by not putting your new coupons in the sitemap, you are not giving the search engines one of the strongest signals possible that new content is there.
Of course, you have to automate your sitemap and have it update as often as possible. Depending on the size of your site and therefore the processing time, you could do it hourly, every 4 hours, something like that. If you need recommendations for automated sitemap tools, let me know. I should also point out that you should put the frequency that the URLs are updated (you should keep static URLs for even your coupons if possible). This will be a big win for you.
Finally, if you want to make sure your static pages are always indexed, or want to keep an eye on different types of coupons, you can create separate sitemaps under your main sitemap.xml and segment by type. So static-pages-sitemap.xml, type-1-sitemap.xml, etc. This way you can monitor indexation by type.
Hope this helps! Let me know if you need an audit or something like that. Sounds like there are some easy wins!
John
-
Hello Ahuj,
To answer your final question first:
Crawlers will not stop until they encounter something they cannot read or are told not to continue beyond a certain point. So your site will be updated in the index upon each crawl.
I did some quick browsing and it sounds like an automated sitemap might be your best option. Check out this link on Moz Q&A:
https://moz.com/community/q/best-practices-for-adding-dynamic-url-s-to-xml-sitemap
There are tools out there that will help with the automation process, which will update hourly/daily to help crawlers find your dynamic pages. The tool suggested on this particular blog can be found at:
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standalone-google-sitemap-generator.html
I have never used it, but it is worth looking into as a solution to your problem. Another good suggestion I saw was to place all removed deals in an archive page and make them unavailable for purchase/collection. This sounds like a solution that would minimize future issues surrounding 404's, etc.
Hope this helps!
Rob
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
-
Active, Old Large site with SEO issues... Fix or Rebuild?
Looking for opinions and guidance here. Would sincerely appreciate help. I started a site long, long ago (1996 to be exact) focused on travel in the US. The site did very well in the search results up until panda as I built it off templates using public databases to fill in the blanks where I didn't have curated content. The site currently indexes around 310,000 pages. I haven't been actively working on the site for years and while user content has kept things somewhat current, I am jumping back into this site as it provides income for my parents (who are retired). My questions is this. Will it be easier to track through all my issues and repair, or rebuild as a new site so I can insure everything is in order with today's SEO? and bonus points for this answer ... how do you handle 301 redirects for thousands of incoming links 😕 Some info to help: CURRENTLY DA is in the low 40s some pages still rank on first page of SERPs (long-tail mainly) urls are dynamic (I have built multiple versions through the years and the last major overhaul was prior to CMS popularity for this size of site) domain is short (4 letters) but not really what I want at this point Lots of original content, but oddly that content has been copied by other sites through the years WHAT I WANT TO DO get into a CMS so that anyone can add/curate content without needing tech knowledge change to a more relevant domain (I have a different vision) remove old, boilerplate content, but keep original
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Millibit1 -
Clean-up Question after a wordpress site Hack added pages with external links from a massive link wheel?
Hey All, Thought I would throw this out to ensure I am dotting my "i's" and crossing my "t's"..... Client WordPress site was hacked injected 3-4 pages that cross linked to hundreds (affiliate junk spam link wheel). Pages were removed, 3rd party cleared all malware/viruses. Heavy duty firewall and security monitoring are in place. Hacked pages are now showing as 404. No penalties, ranking issues....If anything there was a temporary BOOST in rankings due to the large link-wheel type net that the pages were receiving....That has since leveled out rankings. I guess my question is, in your opinion is it best to let those pages 404, I am noticing a large amount of links going to them from all over the world from this large link net that was built. I find the temptation to 301 re-direct deleted pages to the homepage difficult...lol..{the temptation is REAL}. Is there anything I am missing? Any other steps that YOU would take? I am assuming letting those pages 404 would be the best bet, as in time they will roll off index.... Thank you in advance, I appreciate any feedback or opinions....
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Anthony_Howard0 -
Dynamic Content Boxes: how to use them without get Duplicate Content Penalty?
Hi everybody, I am starting a project with a travelling website which has some standard category pages like Last Minute, Offers, Destinations, Vacations, Fly + Hotel. Every category has inside a lot of destinations with relative landing pages which will be like: Last Minute New York, Last Minute Paris, Offers New York, Offers Paris, etc. My question is: I am trying to simplify my job thinking about writing some dynamic content boxes for Last Minute, Offers and the other categories, changing only the destination city (Rome, Paris, New York, etc) repeated X types in X different combinations inside the content box. In this way I would simplify a lot my content writing for the principal generic landing pages of each category but I'm worried about getting penalized for Duplicate Content. Do you think my solution could work? If not, what is your suggestion? Is there a rule for categorize a content as duplicate (for example number of same words in a row, ...)? Thanks in advance for your help! A.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | OptimizedGroup0 -
Duplicate content for product pages
Say you have two separate pages, each featuring a different product. They have so many common features, that their content is virtually duplicated when you get to the bullets to break it all down. To avoid a penalty, is it advised to paraphrase? It seems to me it would benefit the user to see it all laid out the same, apples to apples. Thanks. I've considered combining the products on one page, but will be examining the data to see if there's a lost benefit to not having separate pages. Ditto for just not indexing the one that I suspect may not have much traction (requesting data to see).
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SSFCU0 -
[linkbuilding] link partner page on webshop, is it working?
Hello Mozzers, I am wondering about the effect of link building by swapping links between websites and adding a link partner page to the web shop containing hundreds of links. I have this new competitor coming in to the SERP of Google competing on the keywords I am targeting. The competitor has way more links than our web shop. The competitor has a page with hundreds of links to other web shops witch on there turn has a link to there web shop. (not all off them link back btw) I always thought it is no use sharing links with other websites this way in creating a huge page with hundreds of links. it is of no benefit for neighter website to do this. Still it does seems to work (?) and tis strategy is used by a lot of web shops in the Netherlands. How are you guys looking at this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | auke1810
Witch of you guy's are using strategy like this?
Should I pick up this strategy myself?0 -
Month old site and alreasdy ranks 3 for competitive keyword
I know this individual does this with several sites and then offers them for sale to his competitors. Obviously spammy thru and thru, but how can google reward a site thats not even two months old, with 1900 + links with a ranking of #3 for a highly competitive keyword? Please dont post the actual name or url of the website as we dont want to give him any more credit but this blows my mind as he has done this several times with other sites and never gets penalized. http://tinyurl.com/b9jysa5 Any ideas as to how he can accomplish this besides almost 2000 links in less than 2 months? How is that even remotely natural? I know his other sites have been reported to google but they never did anything about it. Thanks for any feedback.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anthonytjm0 -
Getting sites unbanned in bulk
Prior to the Panda update we had 1 main site, and 300 or so satellite sites. The satellite sites all had an identical template with identical content. The satellite sites all got flagged, and the main site persevered. We'd like to TRY to get all of these sites unbanned in bulk. My question is...how 'DIFFERENT' should these sites be? I know that a real google employee will be looking. All of these sites will be in the same industry...so how 'different' can the content really be? I am going to try to do this in sets of 10 and purchase a different template for EACH city/satellite site, as well as having varying categories, but realistically how doomed/successful do you think this endeavor will be? Any advice? realistic timeline?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ilyaelbert0 -
Opinions Wanted: Links Can Get Your Site Penalized?
I'm sure by now a lot of you have had a chance to read the Let's Kill the "Bad Inbound Links Can Get Your Site Penalized" Myth over at SearchEngineJournal. When I initially read this article, I was happy. It was confirming something that I believed, and supporting a stance that SEOmoz has taken time and time again. The idea that bad links can only hurt via loss of link juice when they get devalued, but not from any sort of penalization, is indeed located in many articles across SEOmoz. Then I perused the comments section, and I was shocked and unsettled to see some industry names that I recognized were taking the opposite side of the issue. There seems to be a few different opinions: The SEOmoz opinion that bad links can't hurt except for when they get devalued. The idea that you wouldn't be penalized algorithmically, but a manual penalty is within the realm of possibility. The idea that both manual and algorithmic penalties were a factor. Now, I know that SEOmoz preaches a link building strategy that targets high quality back links, and so if you completely prescribe to the Moz method, you've got nothing to worry about. I don't want to hear those answers here - they're right, but they're missing the point. It would still be prudent to have a correct stance on this issue, and I'm wondering if we have that. What do you guys think? Does anybody have an opinion one way or the other? Does anyone have evidence of it being one way or another? Can we setup some kind of test, rank a keyword for an arbitrary term, and go to town blasting low quality links at it as a proof of concept? I'm curious to hear your responses.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AnthonyMangia0