Add selective URLs to an XML Sitemap
-
Hi!
Our website has a very large no of pages. I am looking to create an XML Sitemap that contains only the most important pages (category pages etc). However, on crawling the website in a tool like Xenu (the others have a 500 page limit), I am unable to control which pages get added to the XML Sitemap, and which ones get excluded.
Essentially, I only want pages that are upto 4 clicks away from my homepage to show up in the XML Sitemap.
How should I create an XML sitemap, and at the same time control which pages of my site I add to it (category pages), and which ones I remove (product pages etc).
Thanks in advance!
Apurv
-
Thanks a lot for sharing Travis. This is really helpful!
Appreciate your help here.
-
Hey Intermediate,
Here's my setup - image - http://screencast.com/t/qThC401hQVUp Be careful of the line breaks if you want your sitemap to be pretty (I'm not sure if it also works if everything is on a single line).
Column A:
Column B:
URLColumn
<lastmod>2013-08-27</lastmod>
Column
<changefreq>always</changefreq>Column E:
<priority>1</priority>Column F:
=CONCATENATE(A2,B2,C2,D2,E2)You will need to add this as first 2 lines in your sitemap:
and add to the end, but you should be good to go!
I Hope that helps! -
Thanks Schwaab!
-
Hi Travis
That sounds like a smart way to go about this. Could you please guide me regarding how to add parameters like lastmod, priority, changefreq etc in the XML sitemap, using the URLs that I have in the Excel sheet.
Thanks!
-
If you have a list of all the URLs on your site, it is easy to create a sitemap using excel. I have a template that I use and I can crank out a 50k URL sitemap in 5 minutes.
-
I would recommend purchasing Screaming Frog. You can crawl the site and sort the URLs by level. Remove the URLs that are too deep from the crawl and export to XML sitemap. Screaming Frog is definitely worth the price to unlock all of its features and have an unlimited crawl limit.
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 301 Re-direct
Hello, If we publish a blog post with a url which accidentally contains a number at the end (blog.companyname.com/subject-title-0), is it best-practice to update the URL (e.g. to blog.companyname.com/subject-title) and put in a 301 re-direct from the old to the new one or should it simply be left as is? I've read that 301's lose link equity and relevance so is it really worth re-directing for the sake of a cleaner url? Thanks for your input! John
Technical SEO | | SEOCT1 -
How Shold I Structure URLs for a Portfolio?
Hi Moz Community, My web design agency has a lot of different projects we showcase in the portfolio of our site, but I'm having trouble finding information on the best practices for how to structure the URLs for all of those portfolio pages. We have tons of projects that we've done in the same service category and even multiple projects we've done for the same company within that category. For example, right now things look like: www.rootdomain.com/portfolio/web-design/clientname which tends to get long, bulky and awkward, considering we do lots of projects in the web design category and might do a second project for the same company. How should we differentiate the projects from a URL standpoint to avoid having all of the pages compete for the same keyword? Does it even matter, given that these portfolio showcases are primarily image-based anyways?
Technical SEO | | formandfunctionagency0 -
Woocommerce URL Structure Issue
Hi everyone ! To put you in context, I am doing an audit on an E-Commerce site selling auto parts with WooCommerce. I have some concerns regarding the url structure and here's why: Product category page url: /auto/drivetrain/cv-axle-shaft-assembly/
Technical SEO | | alexrbrg
Product page url included in the product category page: /product/acura-integra-cv-axle-shaft-90-01-honda-civic/ The way I see my situation is that the product page is considered by Google as an intern link and not as a page included in in the subfolder of the category page. 1. Am I right?
2. If yes, is there a solution to fix the issue with woocommerce to improve the category page ranking ? Thanks y'all !0 -
Keyword Phrase in URL structure
Wondered the best URL structure, to include a major keyword phrase. Our clients' case is that their domain name is not the main keyword. So should we include the keyword phrase in the URL structure to list all their office locations: A - www.website.com/anxiety-treatment/denver/1001
Technical SEO | | ErnieB
or
B - www.website.com/denver/1001 Would this be considered keyword stuffing? We'd like "A" above to rank for keyword phrases related to "anxiety treatment denver", etc.0 -
Keyword in URL vs organization
I have a jobs site that currently has the following structure for jobs: www.site.com/jobs/openings/1234.html Categories used to be listed this way: www.site.com/jobs/openings/accounting But we changed it to: www.site.com/jobs/category/accounting Does it matter? Is one better than the other? The page title, heading, and description also have the word "openings" or "opening" in them.
Technical SEO | | cmp1010 -
Keywords in Vanity URL
If I set up a vanity URL that just 301's to the main site, do the search engines look at the keywords in the vanity URL when determing how to rank the site. For example, if I set up a vanity URL of www.coolnewtechgear.com, and redirect it to www.company.com/products/, would the search engines view the keywords of cool, new, tech, and gear and associate that with the page it's getting redirected to? Or does it ignore the vanity URL and only look at the content of the page itself?
Technical SEO | | ryanwats0 -
HTML url extension
I've read some information about the extension of an url. But i couldn't find a clear answer. What is better for SEO, an extension with html or without? /make-money-online/how-to-make-a-million-dollars-in-1-year/ or /make-money-online/how-to-make-a-million-dollars-in-1-year.html/ Is there a difference between a normal website or a blog?
Technical SEO | | PlusPort0 -
Is "last modified" time in XML Sitemaps important?
My Tech lead is concerned that his use of a script to generate XML sitemaps for some client sites may be causing negative issues for those sites. His concern centers around the fact that the script generates a sitemap which indicates that every URL page in the site was last modified at the exact same date and time. I have never heard anything to indicate that this might be a problem, but I do know that the sitemaps I generate for other client sites can choose server response or not. What is the best way to generate the sitemap? Last mod from actual time modified, or all set at one date and time?
Technical SEO | | ShaMenz0