We have a static sitemap and a blog...Uh oh!
-
Hi
We have a static sitemap and a blog...Uh oh! We are are just realizing that the 2 are not very compatible!! We need a dynamic sitemap. Is there such a thing as a "set and forget" sitemap that updates itself without us maintaining a database of sitemap data?
Thanks
Andrew
-
You have a very typical case here, Studio33. The usual way to handle multiple sitemaps most efficiently is to create a sitemap index file at the root of the site which would list the locations of the two actual xml sitemaps you have.
Then in both Bing and Google webmaster tools as well as your robots.tx file, you point to the sitemap index file. This way, you're giving the maximum number of signal for where the engines can find your sitemaps. (A sitemap in internal directories may not be found by search engines - they're trained to look for a standard sitemap file in a standard location at the root of your site - no sense making it hard for them!).
Here's Google Webmaster Tools' help doc on making a sitemap index file.
Hope that helps?
Paul
-
As long as the pages are linked you need not have them in the site map.
a sitemap is not even necessary for most sites,but the best way to generate is http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2013/02/20/building-sitemaps-manually-stop-until-you-read-this.aspx
Google has something simuar
-
Cheers problem solved!
Thanks
Andrew
-
1: not sure, but it opens ok. but if you submit to WMTs it would warn you if there is a problem
2: to my knowledge, its ok to have more than 1 sitemap (seen a few places have 2 with no issue)
-
http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/page/feature-table.aspx
Google sitemap Yes
so it already generates a sitemap, you just have to find the link
a bit of googling says ther url is www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.axd (but that was a very old refferance might be different now)
-
Hi Paddy,
Your answer prompted me to dig a little further and I have just found that it already has a dynamic one..under /Blog/sitemap.axd.
This raises 2 more questions for me:
1. what is axd, is it ok to use axd not xml.
2. Can a site have 2 sitemaps. I will have 1 in www.example.com/sitemap.xml and 1 in www.example.com//Blog/sitemap.axd. Is that ok? Anything to be aware of with this set up?
Thanks
Andrew
-
-
what cms are you using? most have sitemaps auto generated, or the there is a plugin available.
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
-
Spotify XML Sitemap
All, Working on an SEO work up for a Spotify site. Looks like they are using a sitemap that links to additional pages. A problem, none of the links are actually linked within the sitemap. This feels like a strong error. https://lubricitylabs.com/sitemap.xml Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dmaher0 -
Should I redirect off topic blog posts?
We launched a store on top of a popular blog. The blog had nothing to do with the store. The blog has a lot of backlinks and traffic, but our store is now our primary business. I am concerned that the off topic blog content may be affecting or ability to rank better for the core store business. Should we delete or redirect the old blog content to another website to improve the SEO for our store?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo-mojo1 -
Will Regularly Adding New Blog Posts Improve Ranking?
We have added very little new website content in the last year. Our domain is www.metro-manhattan.com. Would adding a brand-new blog post once a week help improve our ranking in Google? A few years ago adding new content would've had quickly had a positive effect. Is that still the case? Or should we focus content creation resources in other areas such as social media? Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Duplicate URL Parameters for Blog Articles
Hi there, I'm working on a site which is using parameter URLs for category pages that list blog articles. The content on these pages constantly change as new posts are frequently added, the category maybe for 'Heath Articles' and list 10 blog posts (snippets from the blog). The URL could appear like so with filtering: www.domain.com/blog/articles/?taxonomy=health-articles&taxon=general www.domain.com/blog/articles/?taxonomy=health-articles&taxon=general&year=2016 www.domain.com/blog/articles/?taxonomy=health-articles&taxon=general&year=2016&page=1 All pages currently have the same Meta title and descriptions due to limitations with the CMS, they are also not in our xml sitemap I don't believe we should be focusing on ranking for these pages as the content on here are from blog posts (which we do want to rank for on the individual post) but there are 3000 duplicates and they need to be fixed. Below are the options we have so far: Canonical URLs Have all parameter pages within the category canonicalize to www.domain.com/blog/articles/?taxonomy=health-articles&taxon=general and generate dynamic page titles (I know its a good idea to use parameter pages in canonical URLs). WMT Parameter tool Tell Google all extra parameter tags belong to the main pages (e.g. www.domain.com/blog/articles/?taxonomy=health-articles&taxon=general&year=2016&page=3 belongs to www.domain.com/blog/articles/?taxonomy=health-articles&taxon=general). Noindex Remove all the blog category pages, I don't know how Google would react if we were to remove 3000 pages from our index (we have roughly 1700 unique pages) We are very limited with what we can do to these pages, if anyone has any feedback suggestions it would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Xtend-Life0 -
Should we be showing last modified date for each page in our sitemap?
We're not currently displaying the last modified date in our sitemap, e.g.: <url><loc>http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/about-our-charity</loc></url> Are their any advantages to including this data? One benefit that occurred to us is that it will enable Google to determine which pages have fresh content and which are therefore worth crawling, helping Google index beneficial changes quicker. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SOS_Children1 -
Merging blog post tags within static page - Rel = Canonical?
As a blogger, I use a combination of categories and tags in order to organize my content. I do index tags because they've been very powerful for SEO purposes, but there are certain keywords in which I'd like to be able to create an entirely separate static page with the tagged posts merged onto it. So in other words, this is what I'd like the landing page to be: www.website.com/keyword as opposed to www.website.com/tags/keyword Because of this, I'm uncertain what I need to do with that tag page. With this, I would assume that www.website.com/tags/keywords needs to be indexed, but what would be the wise thing to do? Do I place a rel=canonical on www.website.com/tags/keyword to the static page? Do I do a simple re-direct? Do I just leave it indexed? Will it dilute my desired landing page? Would appreciate all comments and thoughts. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | longview0 -
What's the best method for segmenting HTML sitemap?
Hello all, I was wondering if anyone can help me. Currently I'm trying to set up a HTML sitemap for our website and am having trouble with the 500+ pages of content under each category. How do you segment your HTML sitemap in a case like this, keeping in mind the less than 100 links per page rule? For example, http://www.careerbliss.com/salary/ allows our users to search salaries under company, job title, and location. You can imagine how many thousands of pages we need to represent. Any help will be greatly appreciated! Cheers! Reyna
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CareerBliss0 -
A Blog Structure Dilemma We're Facing...
We're launching a pretty large content program (in the form of a blog) and have a structure issue: Big fans of Wordpress for efficiency reasons, but our platform doesn't allow hosting of a wordpess (or other 3rd party) blog on the primary domain where we want it. site.com/blog Here are the options: 1. Sub-domain: We can easily put it there. Benefit is we use the efficient Wordpress tools and very fast to setup etc. Downside is that the root domain won't get benefit of any backlinks to the blog (as far as I understand). I also don't believe the primary domain will benefit from the daily fresh/unique content the blog offers. 2. Custom Rig: We could create our own manual system of pages on the site to look just like our blog would. This would allow us to have it at site.com/blog and benefit from any backlinks and fresh content. The downside is that it won't be as efficient to manage. 3. External Site: Create a different site just for the blog. Same issue as the sub-domain I believe. User Experience is a top priority, and all of the above pretty much can accomplish the same UX goal, with #3 requiring a some additional strategy on positioning. Is #1 of #3 going to be a big regret down the road though, and is the backlink/content benefit clearly worth doing #2? (correct me if I'm wrong on my assumptions with #1 but at least with the backlinks I'm almost certain that's the case) Many thanks for your inputs on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOPA0