Do I need an XML sitemap?
-
I have an established website that ranks well in Google. However, I have just noticed that no xml sitemap has been registered in Google webmaster tools, so the likelihood is that it hasn't been registered with the other search engines. However, there is an html sitemap listed on the website.
Seeing as the website is already ranking well, do I still need to generate and submit an XML sitemap? Could there be any detriment to current rankings in doing so?
-
Thanks for all your help guys, much appreciated.
-
XML Sitemap is helping you to provide information to Google! Your website is small and ranking well is so, that's really good.
First of all, XML sitemap will not create any negative effect to your existing ranking. So, you have to go for XML Sitemap.
XML Sitemap can help you to measure total number of pages and existence of indexed pages. If your indexing value will go down so, you can drill down more to improve it.
One another thing, you can provide image information in your XML sitemap and that will help you to improve impression and clicks from Google image search.
And bigger picture is that, you'll never be small ... Your website will be big in future so, why should not start to follow standard practice of SEO to get maximum in future.
I hope, it will work for you!
-
XML Sitemaps are important for search engines. It makes their job easier. Even if you rank in the #1 position today you still want to take care of the maintaining your position. Especially for the simple stuff.
Here is a link for an XML Generator
I hope this helps and Good luck.
-
Look at your risk vs reward. The only "risk" here is the time involved in doing it.... which hopefully will not take you long- Even for a large site. The "reward" is making it easier for search engines to find your pages. ....And that can only be a good thing - right?
-
For the sites that I have added sitemaps to, no matter how small, it seems to only have helped. Either brought out some areas I could improve on or just general site architecture awareness which helped me see a bigger picture.
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
-
URL / sitemap structure for support pages
I am creating a site that has four categories housed in folders off of the TLD. Example: example.com/category-1
Technical SEO | | InterCall
example.com/category-2
example.com/category-3
example.com/category-4 Those category folders contain sub-folders that house the products inside each category. Example: example.com/category-1/product-1
example.com/category-2/product-1
etc. Each of the products have a corresponding support page with technical information, FAQs, etc. I have three options as to how to structure the support pages' URLs. Option 1 - Add new sub-folder with "support" added to string: example.com/category-1/product-1-support Option 2 - Add a second sub-folder off of the product sub-folder for support: example.com/category-1/product-1/support Option 3 - Create a "support" folder with product sub-folders: example.com/support/product-1 Which of these three options would you choose? I don't like having one large /support folder that houses all products. It seems like this would create a strange crawling and UX situation. The sitemap would have a huge /support folder with all of my products in it and the keywords in my category folders would be replaced with the word "support." Because I would rather have the main product pages ranking over any of the support pages (outside of searches containing the word "support"), I am leaning toward Option 2: example.com/category-1/product-1/support. I think this structure indicates to crawlers that the more important page is the product page, while the support page is secondary to that. It also makes it clear to users that this is the support page for that particular product. Does anyone have any experience or perspective on this? I'm open to suggestions and if I'm overthinking it, tell me that too. Thanks, team.0 -
I Lost Index Status of My Sitemap
We have a simple WordPress website for our law firm, with an English version and a Spanish version. I have created a sitemap (with appropriate language markup in the XML file) and submitted it to Webmaster Tools. Google crawled the site and accepted the sitemap last week, 24/24 pages indexed, 12 English and 12 Spanish. This week, Google decided to remove one of the pages from the index, showing 23/24 pages indexed. So, my questions are as follows: How can I find out which page was dropped from the index? If the pages are the same content, but different language, why did only one version of the page get dropped, while the other version remains? Why did the Big G drop one of my pages from the index? How can I reindex the dropped page? I know this is a fairly basic issue, and I'm embarrassed for asking, but I sure do appreciate the help.
Technical SEO | | RLG0 -
XML Sitemap Generators
I am looking to use a different sitemap generator that can do 5 thousand or more pages at once. Any recommendations? Thanks guys.
Technical SEO | | Chenzo0 -
Where is Schema, Twitter cards and OpenGraph code need?
Hello, I've adding OpenGraph, Twitter cards and Google's Schema code to my website to help these services pick the correct information about my website. I'm doing this as per the Moz SEO cheatsheet. Does these rich snippets need to be on the index page only, or should they appear on every page?
Technical SEO | | popcreativeltd0 -
Meta title Tag dilemma.... need help
Hey, Guys I have a dilemma that I cannot figure out how to solve. One thing that I have learned is that the meta tag is probably one of the most important factors of SEO. I work in the industry of real estate and we are located in a mid-sized market, Augusta, GA, which does not have a hugely competitive digital marketplace. So, I have told my web developer the changes that I want her to make to our major sub-domain pages on our website. I am anticipating that once she makes these changes which will allow me to make the necessary SEO changes to website, that we will see some good results. I have one dilemma that I can't figure out how to solve with the meta title tag. Check out our rental section: http://aubenrealty.com/rentals.cfm Now, click on any rental property and it will take you to that rental's page. Notice the page title " Auben Realty- real estate....." This is identical for every active and non-active property on our website. Every time we create a new property, this is what it spits out. Now, take it a step further and click on " Contact me about this property," and you will see the same page title. My dilemma is, " How do we fix this?" My assumption is that the best page title would be the address for each property( ex, 1322 Laurel Street, Augusta Ga 30904), right ? Is this some kind of simple coding adjustment?
Technical SEO | | AubbiefromAubenRealty0 -
Need help with home page on site
Hello! Thanks for reading in advance! I've got a relatively old site (12 year old domain) that has experienced a drop in rankings specifically for our home page. Some of the key terms that I'd assume we would rank well for are: "expedite us passport" According to SEOMOZ, our on page optimization receives a C for the termr. also, the root domain and page have decent links, etc. However; looking at Google (logged out and in incognito mode in chrome), a page on our site http://www.passportsandvisas.com/passport/index.asp ranks well and our HOME page isn't listed in the top 50 or 100. THis is the case for a lot of keywords we used to rank well for. I would have thought our home page would have at least outranked an internal page. Any thoughts would be very, very helpful!
Technical SEO | | santiago230 -
Need help with Joomla duplicate content issues
One of my campaigns is for a Joomla site (http://genesisstudios.com) and when my full crawl was done and I review the report, I have significant duplicate content issues. They seem to come from the automatic creation of /rss pages. For example: http://www.genesisstudios.com/loose is the page but the duplicate content shows up as http://www.genesisstudios.com/loose/rss It appears that Joomla creates feeds for every page automatically and I'm not sure how to address the problem they create. I have been chasing down duplicate content issues for some time and thought they were gone, but now I have about 40 more instances of this type. It also appears that even though there is a canonicalization plugin present and enabled, the crawl report shows 'false' for and rel= canonicalization tags Anyone got any ideas? Thanks so much... Scott | |
Technical SEO | | sdennison0 -
Should I worry about errors MozBot finds but is not on my sitemap?
MozBot crawled a found a couple errors that isn't included on my sitemap plugin, such as duplicate page content on author pages. Should I worry about things not on my sitemap?
Technical SEO | | 10JQKAs0