Do we need to update our sitemaps each time our content changes?
-
Dear SEO experts!
We have created sites maps to get our international sub-domains indexed, however we're unsure if we have to update our sitemaps each time our content changes on our many landing pages which are translated to 17 different languages? Obviously the goal is to make it dynamic so it updates itself.
I hope you can help us with some advice.
Thanks a lot!
Allan
-
Thanks a lot for your answers, fantastic!
Best regards,
Allan
-
Ahh yes, <lastmod>. How did I forget this, I'm usually such a stickler on sitemaps. Do you have any further info on 2% tolerance Alan, or is that just your personal findings? </lastmod>
-
I have to disagree, if you include <a><lastmod></a>2012-07-24T08:36:20Zlastmod> tag, then yes you should update it. Bing for example will ignore your site map if it is not accurate. The have a tolerance of about 2% errors.
If your site is only small, and all your pages are linked, then I would not even bother with a sitemap. Bing also stats that you should not list all your pages in a sitemap, but only your key pages.
Sitemaps don't help rankings only indexing, on large sites it is good to tell the search engine what pages have changed, or what pages are good pages to find links to other pages,
-
Hi Allan
You don't need to update the sitemap if the content has changed but the URL of the page remains the same. The only time I update sitemaps is 1. if there are new pages and 2. if we remove pages. If you don't update the sitemap after you remove a page then you'll get 404s (e.g. a busy e-commerce site when products are sold out and not going to be restocked, you'd remove the page).
-
Hey Allan,
You only need to update your sitemaps if you are creating new pages; if you are simply updating the content on pages that already exist in the sitemaps, you do not need to update them.
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
-
Sitemap issue
On this link you can see the sitemap: http://bit.ly/2XC9J5G.
International SEO | | vanGoGh-creative
I don't understand what the error is.
From the search console I have the following indication: "The XML Sitemap cannot be analyzed because it contains one or more prefixes of the unassociated namespace. For example, the error is generated when xhtml:linknot preceded by xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" is detected in a Sitemap.
Will you help me, please solve?
Thank you very much.</xhtml:link> Massimiliano0 -
International Sites - Sitemaps, Robots & Geolocating in WMT
Hi Guys, I have a site that has now been launched in the US having originally just been UK. In order to accommodate this, the website has been set-up using directories for each country. Example: domain.com/en-gb domain.com/en-us As the site was originally set-up for UK, the sitemap, robots file & Webmaster Tools account were added to the main domain. Example: domain.com/sitemap.xml domain.com/robots.txt The question is does this now need changing to make it specific for each country. Example: The sitemap and robots.txt for the UK would move to: domain.com/en-gb/sitemap.xml domain.com/en-gb/robots.txt and the US would have its own separate sitemap and robots.txt. Example : domain.com/en-us/sitemap.xml domain.com/en-us/robots.txt Also in order to Geolocate this in WMT would this need to be done for each directory version instead of the main domain? Currently the WMT account for the UK site is verified at www.domain.com, would this need reverifying at domain.com/en-gb? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!
International SEO | | CarlWint0 -
International hreflang - will this handle duplicate content?
The title says it all - if i have duplicate content on my US and UK website, will adding the hreflang tag help google figure out that they are duplicate for a reason and avoid any penalties?
International SEO | | ALLee1 -
E-Commerce site in 2 languages - Duplicate content or not?
How does Google view this? Our current site works like:
International SEO | | bjs2010
www.domain.com/EN - English
www.domain.com/ES - Spanish All products are the same, just different language and different URL for them - is this good or bad? I thought of either Going with .co.uk or .com for "English" and a .es for "Spanish"
OR Subdomaining it. www.es.domain.com and www.en.domain.com Any advice appreciated!0 -
Duplicate content or not ?
Hello, I would like your expert opinion I have a site in spanish for Spain and Mexico As domain name, I have .es and .mx This is the same site. We do not have any redirects. From .mx to .es for example. >> your opinion?
International SEO | | android_lyon
if I declare targeting in Spain in Google Webmaster tools (in settings) and in another profile with in Mexico, we have a duplicate content? Thank you for your feedback. Sorry for my english, i'm french 😉0 -
Content in different languages
HI all, I need some advice about displaying content in different languages. Currently I 301 to the correct locale based on IP. e.g. German 301s from site.com to site.com/de En 301s from site.com to site.com/en Is this the best way or would it just be better to change the content based on browser and keep the URL the same? I have href="/hr" hreflang="hr" rel="alternate" /> tags implemented for all locales on site Thanks
International SEO | | Sayers0 -
Does penguin update affect all sub-domains?
A UK sub-domain of a big US site got hit by Penguin last week. The two operations are completely separate apart from sharing a parent domain. The US site also run a multitude of other sub-domains in the same marketplace. Their link profile is not squeaky clean. The question is, could the actions of the US site, either in bad links, or poor on-site issues, have caused Penguin to hit the UK sub-domain? Unfortunately I have no access to the US Analytics or rankings data to know if they were hit by Penguin too. Thanks
International SEO | | BeattieGroup0 -
Internationally targetted subdomains and Duplicate content
A client has a site they'd like to translated into French, not for the french market but for french speaking countries. My research tells me the best way to implement this for this particular client is to create subfolders for each country. For ease of implementation I’ve decided against ccTLD’s and Sub Domains. So for example… I'll create www.website.com/mr/ for Mauritania and in GWT set this to target Mauritania. Excellent so far. But then I need to build another sub folder for Morocco. I'll then create www.website.com/ma/ for Morocco and in GWT set this to target Morocco. Now the content on these two sub folders will be exactly the same and I’m thinking about doing this for all French speaking African countries. It would be nice to use www.website.com/fr/ but in GWT you can only set one Target country. Duplicate content issues arise and my fear of perturbing the almighty Google becomes a possibility. My research indicates that I should simply canonical back to the page I want indexed. But I want them both to be indexed surely!? I therefore decided to share my situation with my fellow SEO’s to see if I’m being stupid or missing something simple both a distinct possibility!
International SEO | | eazytiger0