Need help creating sitemap
-
Hello,
The details of my question is sitemap related. Below is the background info:
we are ecommerce site with around 4000 pages, and 20000 images. we dont have a sitemap implemented on our site yet. i have checked alot of sitemap tools out there, like g-sitecrawler, xml sitemap, a1 sitemap builder etc, and i tried to create sitemaps via them, but all them give different results. the major links are all there, but the results start to vary for level 2, level 3 links and so on.
plus no matter how much i read up on sitemaps, the more i am getting confused. i read lots of seomoz articles on sitemaps, and due to my limited seo and technical knowledge, the extra information on these articles gets more confusing.
i also just read an article on seomoz that instead of having one sitemap, having multiple smaller sitemaps is very good idea, specially if we are adding lots of new products (which we are).
Now my question:
My question is having understood the immense value of sitemap (and by having it very poorly implemented before), how can i make sure that i get a very good sitemap (both xml and html sitemap). i do not want to do something again and just repeat old mistakes by having a poorly implemented sitemap for our site.
I am hoping that one of the professionals out there, can help me also make and implement the sitemap.
If you can please point me to the right direction.
-
I use http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ as well its well worth the money. you want an accurate site map and you can always edit the text file if you are handy in xml.
-
I've been using xml-sitemaps software for years now, their paid software is great. If you are running PHP based server, you just add the files to one directory and follow the installation steps. It will not only index the entire content, but you can also set limits on how many links per sitemap, they offer addons that automatically creates images/video sitemaps, news, etc. The software also creates an HTML version of the sitemap. And the XML version uses CSS so you can read it with ease.
I would go with them, the software even gives you info on how to submit the sitemaps to Google, sitemap index, etc. Then you can also create a link in the robots.txt so spiders know where to crawl:
Something like:
User-agent: * Sitemap: http://www.example.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
-
Client wants to remove mobile URLs from their sitemap to avoid indexing issues. However this will require SEVERAL billing hours. Is having both mobile/desktop URLs in a sitemap really that detrimental to search indexing?
We had an enterprise client ask to remove mobile URLs from their sitemaps. For their website both desktop & mobile URLs are combined into one sitemap. Their website has a mobile template (not a responsive website) and is configured properly via Google's "separate URL" guidelines. Our client is referencing a statement made from John Mueller that having both mobile & desktop sitemaps can be problematic for indexing. Here is the article https://www.seroundtable.com/google-mobile-sitemaps-20137.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
We would be happy to remove the mobile URLs from their sitemap. However this will unfortunately take several billing hours for our development team to implement and QA. This will end up costing our client a great deal of money when the task is completed. Is it worth it to remove the mobile URLs from their main website to be in adherence to John Mueller's advice? We don't believe these extra mobile URLs are harming their search indexing. However we can't find any sources to explain otherwise. Any advice would be appreciated. Thx.0 -
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 -
XML Sitemap Indexation Rate Decrease
On September 28th, 2013 I saw my indexation rate decrease on my XML sitemap that I've submitted through GWT. I've since scraped my sitemap and removed all 404, 400 errors (which only made up ~5% of the entire sitemap). Any idea why Google randomly started indexing less of my XML sitemap on that date? I updated my sitemap 2 week before that date and had an indexation rate of ~85% - no I'm below 35%. Thoughts, idea, experiences? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobbieWilliams0 -
Help Me find a Great Seo for my Budget!
I am looking for a Good SEO for my tech news site and would like your help in recommending a good SEO that will fit in my budget of 300-500 per month.I have contacted many firms in the Moz directory of recommended firms but found they are out of my monthly price range.Google search for a decent SEO can be scary with so many so called SEO companies.I would like to work with a experienced SEO individual who can come up with a great plan for our site and also implement them.We just had a SEO forensic audit done with Alan Blieweiss and implemented his suggestions and are now looking for someone to work with long term for the rest of our SEO needs.I understand that I cannot afford the top SEO firms or industry leaders but with your help and suggestions I am sure we can afford and find a great SEO. Please reply here or message me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chrisyak0 -
Help!!! Am I being Attacked???
Hello, I do not believe so much in spammy links attacks and I definitely do not believe my site is worth attacking. However, I'm seeing new links pointing to my site that I have no idea where they come from. I just spotted three articles on a poor crappy article site with exact match keywords point to me. The articles are completely unique (copyscaped them) and they were posted according to the site time stamp during Oct and Nov 2012. (And they Appear in the WMT recently discovered links from more or less the same time). What to do (besides for disavowing this domain)? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
I am not a SEO expert , need a gentleman to help me
I have been hit by Latest google update . dont have enough money to pay seo consultants , just wondering if anyone expert can off a free analysis of my site and can point problems. Its not a adsence site . My living depends on this site so cant just keep on doing experiments , by the looks I have been hit hard by negative seo by competitor . I give url in private . Is there any one kind here who can help in private . Would really appreciate .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HateDoingSEO0 -
Need a mobile XML Sitemap?
We're going to be running our mobile site on the same domain and generating content for users on mobile devices with style sheets (will not have m.domain). The content on our URLs will be the exact same. My question is if we need to create a mobile XML Sitemap to submit to the search engines. Do we need to create the Sitemap, that will contain the exact same URLs as our non-mobile Sitemap, and just include <mobile><mobile>tags around the URLs? Or do we need to create a mobile Sitemap at all to alert the search engines that we have mobile content?</mobile></mobile> Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bonnierSEO0 -
Do Banner Ads Help In Link Building?
We have been contacting some webmasters for building links, but a lot of them will only do banner ads on there site. Is having a keyword rich alt tag on the banner ad and a do follow link to our site just as good? Would like to hear your thoughts and l experiences in trying to leverage these banner ads to help in seo ranking. Thank you in advance for your input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anchorwave0