Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should I include unnecessary pages in the sitemap.xml
-
I have a lot of pages that I don't want Google to index, so for most of them, I used cannonical, were they were duplicates, noindex were I wanted to remove the pages, but the question is: Should I include these pages in the sitemap.xml, or just the important pages?
Also should I include them in order to get the changes indexed fastet by Google?
-
That clearly changes my ideas about this ;-). As we're talking about a couple of million pages I wouldn't include them in the sitemaps then and to make sure they're absolutely made sure that it's noindexed.
-
One of the main problem is that there are a lot of such pages (aprox. 2-3 milions) and my indexation rate is really slow for a site this big. The old sitemap structure was to complex, and I wanted so simplify it, so Google wiil crawl only the important pages
-
Hi Silviu,
Hard question, related to your use case I would suggest not to include them. But on the other hand it also shouldn't harm your performance as the URLs in a sitemap are mostly meant to search engines as a full list of URLs they might miss otherwise. It would also help you to see what your indexation rate is. Curious to see what other people think about this.
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
-
Pages Competing With One Another
Hello, We are ranking for an acronym, which I understand can lead to fickle rankings. However, we have two pages ranking page one - two for the same keyword, but they do so in spite of each other. By this I mean, one page will rank, while the other is nowhere to be found. It seems that the one page (a blog post) is more likely to rank on the weekends while the product page is more likely to rank on the weekdays. I would like the product page to rank all the time, and to target another keyword with the blog post. Would removing the keyword from the blog post allow the product page to rank all the time - or would it lead to no pages ranking during times when the blog post would otherwise be ranking? I should note the blog post has more external links and is not exactly optimized for the keyword, while the product page has more internal links and is optimized for the keyword.
On-Page Optimization | | Tom3_152 -
Page Title Length
Hi Gurus, I understand that it is a good practice is to use 50-60 characters for the a page title length. Google appends my brand name to the end of each title (15 characters including spaces) it index. Do I need to count what google adds as part of the maximum recommended length? i.e.
On-Page Optimization | | SunnyMay
is the maximum 50-60 characters + the 15 characters brand name Google adds to the end of the title or 50-60 including the addition? Many thanks!
Lev0 -
URL Structure on Category Pages
Hi, Currently, we having the following URL Structure o our product pages: All Products Pages: www.viatrading.com/wholesale/283/All_Products.html Category Page: www.viatrading.com/wholesale/4/Clothing.html Product Page: www.viatrading.com/wholesale/product/LOAD-HE-WOM/Assorted-High-End-Women-Clothing-Lots.html?cid=4 Since we are going to use another frontend system, we are thinking about re-working on this URL Structure, using something like this: All Products Pages: www.viatrading.com/wholesale-products/ Category Page: www.viatrading.com/wholesale-products/category/ Product Page: www.viatrading.com/wholesale-products/category/product-title/ I understand this is better for SEO and user experience. However, we already have good traffic on the current URL Structure. Should we use same left-side filters on Category Pages as in All Products Page? Since we are using Faceted Navigation, when users filter the Category (e.g. Clothing) they will see same page as Clothing Category Page. Is that an issue for Duplicate Content? Since we are a wholesale company - I understand is using "/wholesale/products/" in URL for all product pages a good idea? If so, should we avoid word "wholesale" in product-title to avoid repeated word in URL? For us, SKU in URL helps the company employees and maybe some clients identify the link. However, what do you think of using the SEO-friendly product-title, and 301 redirect it to www.viatrading.com/BRTA-LN-DISHRACKS/, so 1st link is only used by company members and Canonicalized 2nd is the only one seen by general public? Thank you,
On-Page Optimization | | viatrading10 -
Does Google avoid indexing pages that include registered trademark signs?
I am suspecting that Google often hesitates to index pages that have registered trademarks on them that are marked with a ®. For example EGOL® used in the title tag or in the tag at the top of the page. Registered trademarks are everywhere and most retail product pages contain at least one of them. However, most people use the registered trademark names as text in their writing without adding the registered trademark sign of ®. Have you experienced a problem getting such pages indexed or have you read any articles about how Google treats registered trademarks?
On-Page Optimization | | EGOL0 -
What to do with removed pages and 404 error
I recently removed about 600 'thin' pages from my site which are now showing as 404 errors in WMT as expected. As I understand it I should just let these pages 404 and eventually they'll be dropped from the index. There are no inbound links pointing at them so I don't need to 301 them. They keep appearing in WMT as 404's though so should I just 'mark as fixed' until they stop appearing? Is there any other action I need to take?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Noindex child pages (whose content is included on parent pages)?
I'm sorry if there have been questions close to this before... I've using WordPress less like a blogging platform and more like a CMS for years now... For content management purposes we organize a lot of content around Parent/Child page (and custom-post-type) relationships; the Child pages are included as tabbed content on the Parent page. Should I be noindexing these child pages, since their content is already on the site, in full, on their Parent pages (ie. duplicate content)? Or does it not matter, since the crawlers may not go to all of the tabbed content? None of the pages have shown up in Moz's "High Priority Issues" as duplicate content but it still seems like I'm making the Parent pages suffer needlessly... Anything obvious I'm not taking into consideration? By the by, this is my first post here @ Moz, which I'm loving; this site and the forums are such a great resource! Anyways, thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | rsigg0 -
Should I include a "|" for better page title SEO results?
I have seen many sites that include the "|" in page titles and was wondering if there is some SEO value in the practice. Example: Product Name | Company Name Instead of: Product Name by Company Name I have not seen any value in it myself other than a good way to avoid stop words. I wanted to make sure. Currently I have the "by" included in the page titles.
On-Page Optimization | | JedHenning0 -
E-Commerce product pages that have multiple skus with unique pages.
Hey Guys, With the recent farm/panda update from google i'm at a cross roads as to how I should optimize product pages for a project i'm working on for a client. My client sells tires and one particular tire brand can have up to 15 models and each model can have up to 30 sizes. IE: 'Michelin Pilot Sport Cup' comes in 15 different sizes. Each size will have it's unique product page and description bringing me to my question. Should I use the same description on every size? I do plan on writting unique content for each tire model however i'm not sure if I should do it for every size. After all the tire model description is the same for every size, each size doesn't carry any unique characteristics that I can describe. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | MikeDelaCruz770