Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I redirect my xml sitemap?
-
Hi Mozzers,
We have recently rebranded with a new company name, and of course this necessitated us to relaunch our entire website onto a new domain.
I watched the Moz video on how they changed domain, copying what they did pretty much to the letter. (Thank you, Moz for sharing this with the community!)
It has gone incredibly smoothly. I told all my bosses that we may see a 40% reduction in traffic / conversions in the short term. In the event (and its still very early days) we have in fact seen a 15% increase in traffic and our new website is converting better than before so an all-round success!
I was just wondering if you thought I should redirect my XML sitemap as well? So far I haven't, but despite us doing the change of address thing in webmaster tools, I can see Google processed the old sitemap xml after we did the change of address etc.
What do you think? I know we've been very lucky with the outcome of this rebrand but I don't want to rest on my laurels or get tripped up later down the line.
Thanks everyone!
Amelia
-
That's great new Amelia - so glad I was able to help
-Andy
-
Hi Andy,
I just wanted to say, I followed your advice and now every single page I've submitted via webmaster tools in the xml sitemap (for Commercial Trust) has been indexed! Thank you for helping with this, you are a super-star!
Amelia
-
I will thanks Amelia, and you're welcome
-Andy
-
Thank you, much appreciated! Have a fab day
-
Hi Amelia,
No, no need to do this. As long as you have a new sitemap in place, then just have Google index this one. If they are still indexing the old one, highlight and delete it and then point them to the new one.
-Andy
-
Andy,
There is a new xml sitemap on the new domain: www.commercialtrust.co.uk/sitemap.xml, this is a directory xml sitemap.
The old xml sitemap can be accessed here: www.turnkeylandlords.co.uk/sitemap.xml.
I was wondering if I should redirect the TurnKey Landlords xml to the Commercial Trust xml?
Thanks,
Amelia
-
Hi Amelia,
Rather than redirecting this, do you have the ability to create a new sitemap based on the site as it now stands? However, if there is a new sitemap already in place, then just use Webmaster tools to upload this one.
-Andy
-
Hi Andy,
Everything in the old XML sitemap redirects to the new site.
So, I should redirect the XML as well?
Thank you,
Amelia xx
-
Hi Amelia,
I just want to understand if your old XML sitemap points to any pages that have either moved, changed URL or removed?
If so, then ideally yes. You don't really want a sitemap pointing to lots of 301's, although it is unlikely to do any major harm just yet - it is just better to start with a clean sheet that is correct.
-Andy
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
-
301 Redirecting from domain to subdomain
We're taking on a redesign of our corporate site on our main domain. We also have a number of well established, product based subdomains. There are a number of content pages that currently live on the corporate site that rank well, and bring in a great deal of traffic, though we are considering placing 301 redirects in place to point that traffic to the appropriate pages on the subdomains. If redirected correctly, can we expect the SEO value of the content pages currently living on the corporate site to transfer to the subdomains, or will we be negatively impacting our SEO by transferring this content from one domain to multiple subdomains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location error using pro-sitemaps.com
Hey, guys, We are using the pro-sitemaps.com tool to automate our sitemaps on our properties, but some of them give this error "This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location" for all the urls. Strange thing is that not all of them are with the error and most have all the urls indexed already. Do you have any experience with the tool and what is your opinion? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lgrozeva0 -
Geo-Redirect: good idea or not?
Hi Mozzers, The background: I have this very corporate .com domain which is used worldwide. Next to that, we have another .com domain which is specifically created for the US visitors. Within the organic rankings, we notice that our corporate domain is ranking much better in the US. Many visitors are arriving on this domain. As it is a corporate domain being used worldwide, they get lost. My questions: I know there are ways to redirect by location. Would it be smart to automatically redirect US visitors for the corporate domain to the commercial US-specific domain? Is it possible to only redirect US visitors and leave the website as it is for visitors from other countries. Won't this harm the corporate website (organically) worldwide? If this would be a good idea, any recommended plugins or concrete procedures? Thank you so much for helping me out!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
Sander0 -
Multilingual Sitemaps
Hey there, I have a site with many languages. So here are my questions concerning the sitemaps. The correct way of creating a sitemap for a multilingual site is as followed ( by the official blog of Google ) <urlset xmlns="</span>http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> http://www.example.com/loc> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="</span>http://www.example.com/"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="</span>http://www.example.com/de"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="</span>http://www.example.com/fr"/><a href=" http:="" www.example.com="" fr"="" target="_blank"></xhtml:link><a href=" http:="" www.example.com="" de"="" target="_blank"></xhtml:link><a href=" http:="" www.example.com="" "="" target="_blank"></xhtml:link><a href=" http:="" www.sitemaps.org="" schemas="" sitemap="" 0.9"="" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></urlset> **So here is my first question. My site has over 200.000 pages that all of them support around 5-6 languages. Am I suppose to do this example 200.000 times?****My second question is. My root domain is www.example.com but this one redirects with 301 to www.example.com/en should the sitemap be at ****www.example.com/sitemap.xmlorwww.example.com/en/sitemap.xml ???****My third question is as followed. On WMT do I submit my sitemap in all versions of my site? I have all my languages there.**Thanks in advance for taking the time to respond to this thread and by creating it I hope many people will solve their own questions.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
Redirecting index.html to the root
Hi, I was wondering if there is a safe way to consolidate link juice on a single version of a home page. I find incoming links to my site that link to both mysite.com/ and mysite.com/index.html. I've decided to go with mysite.com/ as my main and only URL for the site and now I'd like to transfer all link juice from mysite.com/index.html to mysite.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | romanbond
When i tried 301 redirect from index.html to the root it created an indefinite loop, of course. I know I can use a RewriteRule.., but will it transfer the juice?? Please help!7 -
Export Website into XML File
Hi, I am having an agency optimize the content on my sites. I need to create XML Schema before I export the content into XML. What is best way to export content including meta tags for an entire site along with the steps on how to?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0 -
How To 301 Redirect .html pages
I need to redirect a page/URL that is purely .html to a new location. I don't know how to do this. All the redirects I can find are for server side code pages .php/.aspx etc. From my understanding I can't put a server side redirect in a .html file. I am hosting on a microsoft server, however the new page I am redirecting to is .php. I am running some WordPress (.php) files on the server. I need to make it redirect before the old page loads so visitors don't start reading something that is about to get redirected Can someone please help me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet0 -
Redirect a subdomain to a subdirectory for SEO purposes.
Hi, I have a site on wordpress and I want to add eCommerce to it. We want to go with Shopify but Shopify only allows to host their platform on a subdomain. I like to have it on a subdorectory, so my question is: Would it make sense to redirect the whole subdomain to a subdirectory (move everything from shop.domain.com to domain.com/shop) for SEO purposes? Would Google see these pages as if they were part of the main domain? Thanks! Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | julienraby0