How would you create and then segment a large sitemap?

[SystemIDBarcodes]

I have a site with around 17,000 pages and would like to create a sitemap and then segment it into product categories.

Is it best to create a map and then edit it in something like xmlSpy or is there a way to silo sitemap creation from the outset?

[SystemIDBarcodes]

Thanks Saijo,

We are trying to silo product types/categories and break them into different sitemaps. I'm familiar with SF but I don't think it will create sitemaps with the granularity that we are looking for.

I'm using XMLSpy but I'm finding it hard to break out blocks of content.

[SystemIDBarcodes]

To my knowledge, Screaming Frog doesn't allow you to create an XML sitemap. Perhaps Excel allows you to format the output from SF but I'm not sure. I did find a utility called XMLSpy which, though pricey, allows me to do some of the sorting I was looking for. Once sorted, I can manually pull out sections to segment my sitemap. It is a pain in the neck because I can determine a silo and do it automatically. That being said, I think I can develop a sitemap template and have our new web programmer to develop a way to auto generate a group of segmented sitemaps.

Anyone know if there is a canned solution that works with IIS?

[Saijo.George]

If you site is structured such that the urls contain the categories you wish to sort , you can use something like Screaming Frog ( http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ ) and export all the urls and sort them out via excel in to categories and go that way

NOTE : the free version has a 500 url limit, so you might want to look at paid ( ask them if it can handle 17,00 urls before getting it ) or look at http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html ( I haven't used it myself , so don't know if you can export stuff to excel from there )

Good luck mate , sounds like you have a big job ahead of you.