Should 301-ed links be removed from sitemap?
-
In an effort to do some housekeeping on our site we are wanting to change the URL format for a couple thousand links on our site. Those links will all been 301 redirected to corresponding links in the new URL format. For example, old URL format: /tag/flowers as well as search/flowerswill be 301-ed to, new URL format: /content/flowers**Question:**Since the old links also exist in our sitemap, should we add the new links to our sitemap in addition to the old links, or replace the old links with new ones in our sitemap? Just want to make sure we don’t lose the ranking we currently have for the old links.Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
-
I'm going to disagree a little bit with the other commenters. I've done quite a few large scale redirect projects and I'm not 100% opposed to using a "dirty sitemap" for a short duration. The better option is to leave some internal links pointed at the old URLs. I know what the search engines say, but I also know what I've experienced when it comes to getting 301'd links crawled again.
Read this post by Everett Sizemore for more info at what I'm describing:
http://moz.com/blog/uncrawled-301s-a-quick-fix-for-when-relaunches-go-too-well
-
"A sitemap should only contain links to active pages."
Hi shawn81
Alex is absolutely correct there.
In fact, Duane Forrester has said repeatedly that Bing absolutely does not like to find such pages in a sitemap and that you should make sure there are never 3XX, 4XX or 5XX status pages included because it will stop Bingbot from crawling your site.
While Googlebot is not so sensitive, the reality is that all search engines allocate a certain amount of crawl capacity for your site...if your sitemaps include a load of pages that are not likely to be indexed, the result is twofold:
- you are wasting capacity on useless pages and the crawler may never get to the stuff you really want indexed
- if the crawler encounters a lot of non-active pages when it crawls, future crawl capacity (not to mention trust) is likely to be reduced
Replace the old URLs with the new and give the bots a little thrill of adventure
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
There shouldn't be any 301 links in a sitemap. A sitemap should only contain links to active pages. So in your case, you should remove all the 301 links and replace them with the new links.
Couple notes - Having 301 links in your sitemap won't hurt your site or SEO unless the sitemap is so huge that you need to split it up into multiple files. But you should really only have the final links in the sitemap, neither people nor bots want to be redirected around. If you properly 301'd the crawlers will automatically update their links.
Changing links around in the sitemap generally won't hurt your site. Especially if the links no longer exist and you're improving the list. There are very few cases where making changes will hurt the site.
-
We have had a problem with this ourselves. We put a 301 redirect on our domain when we were building a new site (went from new. to www.) and search engines are still crawling the new. domain. Bing webmaster tools registers it as an error because they can't find the old site. I would lean toward removing it just because your users are probably being redirected somewhere they wouldn't necessarily want to go.
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
-
Indexed, not submitted in sitemap
I have this problem for the site's blog
Technical SEO | | seomozplan196
There is no problem when I check the yoast plugin setting , but some of my blog content is not on the map site but indexed. Did you have such a problem? What is the cause? my website name is missomister1 -
Remove a page after redirection
Hi, I had page eg. www.example.com/page1 and I redirect 302 it to > www.example.com/page2 After that I fatch this page (page2) with GSC and this page was index in serp. Can I remove this old redirect page > www.example.com/page1 now? Will this remove harm my page?
Technical SEO | | Tormar0 -
301 Redirect
Hello Moz Community, I have a question regarding 301 redirecting a new domain that contains keywords relevant to my website. However, I do NOT want to change my current domain. My main question is, by just redirecting this new domain to my current website, will those keywords in the new domain help with ranking in anyway? Thanks in advance for any help!
Technical SEO | | WyzeOwl0 -
WIki Contextual Links
I want to understand what are Wiki Contextual Links and how are they helpful for SEO. I hear google likes them. Is that true?
Technical SEO | | KS__0 -
301 redirect Issues
my clients site is www.greenbayharvest.co.uk When you enter that URL it redirects to www.greenbayharvest.co.uk/shop, dont ask why, thats the way they set it up and thats what im stuck with. So, how do i resolve the 301 issue here. we want all things to point to www.greenbayharvest.co.uk, in terms of SEO but does the fact that there is a redirect going to /shop make this an issue? we appear to have: www.greenbayharvest.co.uk/shop www.greenbayharvest.co.uk greenbayharvest.co.uk greenbayharvest.co.uk/shop all these URL's go to the same same page so what is the best way to correct this? thanks for any help on this Lee
Technical SEO | | IPIM0 -
Double 301 redirect
Hi together, due to some technical reasons I have redirect (301) an existing link two times. Example: www.mydomain.com/root/site.html > 301 > www.mydomain.com/site.html > 301 www.mydomain.com/site_new.html Is there anybody how has got some experience like doing a double redirect? What about link juice? Best regards Steffen
Technical SEO | | steffen_0 -
Internal Linking
Where is the best information on internal linking. I'm so confused and everything I read says something different. Ahhhh Thanks
Technical SEO | | meardna770 -
Minisites - 301 Redirect or Links to Main site
Not sure whether this is considered black hat or not but I know it is done and I would like to know which is the most effectrive method. If you were to acquire multiple sites in the same niche to your main site (either by buying existing sites or perhaps registering expired domains) which already had strong aged backlinks, is it better to either: a) 301 the new domain to the main site (or a subpage perhaps) b) create 'minisites' on the new domains (trying to mirror the URL structure of the previous incarnation if possible to scoop up and remaining inbound backlink juice, on seperate IPs to the main site as well) and then place several links to the main site & subpages. Would the decay of link juice through 301's mean you lose benefit that way or is it the same as a normal link? Would the 301 method mean any IBL's into URL's other than the homepage be lost? The homepage of the minisite will likely have 4 or 5 internal links so will this dilure the effect of the links to the main site? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | OzDave0