International Sitemaps

[blake.runyon]

Hey Dudes,

Quick question about international sitemaps. Basically we have a mix of subfolders, subdirectories, and ccTLDs for our different international/language sites.

With this in mind how do you recommend we set up the site map. I'm thinking the best solution would be to move the subfolders and subdirectories onto an index and put the ccTLD site maps on their own root only.

domain.ca/sitemap (This would only contain the Canada pages)

domain.com, fr.domain.com, domain.com/eu/ (These pages would all have an index on domain.com/sitemap that points to each language/nations index)

OR

Should all site have a site map under their area. domain.com/sitemap, fr.domain.com/sitemap, domain.com/eu/sitemap, domain.ca/sitemap?

I'm very new to international SEO. I know that our current structure probably isn't ideal... but it's what I've inherited. I just want to make sure I get a good foundation going here. So any tips are much appreciated!

[blake.runyon]

Thanks man!

That's what I was thinking! I'll go with the original plan then to put all on one index except the ccTLDs.

[DirkC]

It doesn't really matter where you put the sitemap - as long as the search engines are able to find them.

You can indicate the location in Webmaster tools - or in the robots.txt file. (you need to validate each domain & subdomain in WMT).

Dirk