Site maps, Is there any benefit?
-
I have a relatively simple and small site (60 pages). All of it is crawlable and there is nothing I want non follow.
So, is there any real benefit to a sitemap since Google can get to all the site anyway?
Do they give the site more credence or something because it's there?
I guess as an aside, are there any favorite sites that will generate a site map?
Thanks!
-
Don't forget you can add your sitemap to your google / bing etc webmasters accounts.
-
Ok, I'm convinced.... I've added sitemaps to my site.
Thanks for the advice regarding standards and the robots.txt file.
-
If your adding new content to you site regularly it may get discovered quicker if your site map is bang up to date.
PLus if your going to do a job, you may aswell do it properly.
-
If all your pages are not being indexed it would help with that. Also, if your pages are not being re-indexed frequently enough it could be beneficial in this sense. Well I don't know of a study regarding this specifically, I imagine it would be a positive signal that you have one as opposed to not.
This site makes great ones, quickly, easily and free: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
When you add it I'd recommend placing it in this standard location: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml
Also, add this location in your robots.txt like so:
sitemap: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml
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
-
Representing categories on my site
My site serves a consumer-focused industry that has about 15-20 well recognized categories, which act as a pretty obvious way to segment our content. Each category supports it's own page (with some useful content) and a series of articles relevant to that category. In short, the categories are pretty focal to what we do. I am moving from DNN to WordPress as my CMS/blog. I am taking the opportunity to review and fix SEO-related issues as I migrate. One such area is my URL structure. On my existing site (on DNN), I have the following types of pages for each topic: / <topic>- this is essentially the landing page for the topic and links to articles</topic> /<topic>/articles/ <article-name>- topics have 3-15 articles with this URL structure</article-name></topic> With WordPress, I am considering moving to articles being under the root. So, an article on (making this up) how to make a widget would be under /how-to-make-a-widget, instead of /<widgets>/article/how-to-make-a-widget I will be using WordPress categories to reflect the topics taxonomy, so I can flag my articles using standard WordPress concepts.</widgets> Anyway, I'm trying to get my head around whether it makes sense to "flatten" my URL structure such that the URLs for each article no longer include the topic (the article page will link to the topic page though). Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | MarkWill1 -
Google having trouble accessing my site
Hi google is having problem accessing my site. each day it is bringing up access denied errors and when i have checked what this means i have the following Access denied errors In general, Google discovers content by following links from one page to another. To crawl a page, Googlebot must be able to access it. If you’re seeing unexpected Access Denied errors, it may be for the following reasons: Googlebot couldn’t access a URL on your site because your site requires users to log in to view all or some of your content. (Tip: You can get around this by removing this requirement for user-agent Googlebot.) Your robots.txt file is blocking Google from accessing your whole site or individual URLs or directories. Test that your robots.txt is working as expected. The Test robots.txt tool lets you see exactly how Googlebot will interpret the contents of your robots.txt file. The Google user-agent is Googlebot. (How to verify that a user-agent really is Googlebot.) The Fetch as Google tool helps you understand exactly how your site appears to Googlebot. This can be very useful when troubleshooting problems with your site's content or discoverability in search results. Your server requires users to authenticate using a proxy, or your hosting provider may be blocking Google from accessing your site. Now i have contacted my hosting company who said there is not a problem but said to read the following page http://www.tmdhosting.com/kb/technical-questions/other/robots-txt-file-to-improve-the-way-search-bots-crawl/ i have read it and as far as i can see i have my file set up right which is listed below. they said if i still have problems then i need to contact google. can anyone please give me advice on what to do. the errors are responce code 403 User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /xmlrpc/0 -
Can anyone review my site please?
just wandering if anyone can review my site and give me some feedback please much grateful I have just really trying to get clients don't have any yet and any help would be great. reseolve.com
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
Have my site been penalised ?
Hi, I recently hired a link builder (who works for a digital marketing agency and wanted to earn some extra cash ) to do some link building for me on keyword Carpet Cleaner Hire Basically , May my ranking for this work has moved from 29 up to 13 , then down to 500 + and now up to 67 ?. It's been all over the place and I am worried that maybe google thinks its unnatural or to many links etc. I looked at some of the work this chap did and there was a log of bookmarks done , apparently to increase social awareness and some articles on random forums I never heard of but the articles didn't look to good and in my eyes were a little spammy.. I don't have any messages in WMT saying I have been penalised or anything but I am naturally worried that this chap may have caused damaged and that I was manually penalised. I have since asked him to stop immediately.. does this sound normal for the ranking to be all over the place in this manner when link building ? How can I tell if I have been manually penalized in any way ? What;s the general consensus ?. Should I contact google or leave it and see what happens ? Other keywords seems to be okay though. Any advice much appreciated. thanks Sarah.
Technical SEO | | SarahCollins1 -
Duplicate Content on Multinational Sites?
Hi SEOmozers Tried finding a solution to this all morning but can't, so just going to spell it out and hope someone can help me! Pretty simple, my client has one site www.domain.com. UK-hosted and targeting the UK market. They want to launch www.domain.us, US-hosted and targeting the US market. They don't want to set up a simple redirect because a) the .com is UK-hosted b) there's a number of regional spelling changes that need to be made However, most of the content on domain.com applies to the US market and they want to copy it onto the new website. Are there ways to get around any duplicate content issues that will arise here? Or is the only answer to simply create completely unique content for the new site? Any help much appreciated! Thanks
Technical SEO | | Coolpink0 -
Getting Listed on Google Satellite Maps
How does a website get listed in the satellite version of Google Maps? I have clients that are ranking number 1 in the pack 7 with Google Places and local SEO but they don't show up on the big map. Click on this link to see what I mean http://connect7.biz/google-maps.jpg I have circled the listings in red. How are these businesses getting listed in the satellite version of Google Maps? Thanks
Technical SEO | | fun52dig
Gary0 -
What is the best image format to put on your site
Hi at the moment i am working with images to try and speed up my site and i am wondering what is the best format to save images and then put on my site. I have been playing around with photoshop where they have the following formats png-24 gif (but not sure which one i should choose or jpeg I would be grateful for your advice and also to know what size i should try and keep the image down to many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
My site ranking
Hello, I have a website and working more than 1 year ago,I worked hard last year and paid alot to make guys write articles from my website to other forums so my keywords rank high and got good visitors, then I get in much care in SEO and found SEOMoz with is very nice,when I downloaded the tool bar it was a shock to find my website is almost zero although the big effort I had, I can do more but I need to guide what I exactly need to improve my website,I almost read alot of the beginner PDF and got good information to work with and can hire people to help too. I did a real big work sharing my subjects and i can see them in top#5 google but for other sites and now i found I am still zero 😞 adding my links inside also didnt help or counted. attached the statistics of the website and the competitors site to let me know which important things to take care to jump over. would be very thankful for detailed help, Best Regards 1_01308477251.png 1_01308477465.png
Technical SEO | | nesr_20200
