Is this a good sitemap hierarchy for a big eCommerce site (50k+ pages).
-
Hi guys, hope you're all good.
I am currently in the process of designing a new sitemap hierarchy to ensure that every page on the site gets indexed and is accessible via Google. It's important that our sitemap file is well structured, divided and organised into relevant sub-categories to improve indexing.
I just wanted to make sure that it's all good before forwarding onto the development team for them to consider. At the moment the site has everything thrown into /sitemap.xml/ and it exceeds the 50k limit. Here is what I have came up with:
A primary sitemap.xml referencing other sitemap files, each of the following areas will have their own sitemap of which is referenced by /sitemap.xml/. As an example, sitemap.xml will contain 6 links, all of which link to other sitemaps.
- Product pages;
- Blog posts;
- Categories and sub categories;
- Forum posts, pages etc;
- TV specific pages (we have a TV show);
- Other pages.
Is this format correct? Once it has been implemented I can then go ahead and submit all 6 separate sitemaps to webmaster tools + add a sitemap link to the footer of the site.
All comments are greatly appreciated - if you know of a site which has a good sitemap architecture, please send the link my way!
Brett
-
Have a read of what Google say about them here.
And yes, image search is huge. As for the way it's used, I can't comment on what everyone else does.
-Andy
-
Interesting, I haven't ever came across someone who said that I should put image URL's in a sitemap. Do users really search via Google images though - if they do aren't they just looking to copy an image / and or download it?
I can't see the site generating qualified leads through image based searches.
-
Duplicate content is when two or more URLs show the same content.
I referred to the fact that sometime categories, tags or subcategories show the same content. By the latter, i mean the same posts.Just to clarify, imagine that you have a category: Dogs and the subcategory: Puppies. And the last 5 articles/posts have both, category and subcategory.
When visiting the main page fo both(cat and subcat) will show the same content, the same 5 posts/articlesDid I make myself clear?
-
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly Gaston, I appreciate it.
You mentioned duplicate content - what do you mean? If the page has already been indexed, Google will skip/re-crawl the page. Not too sure what you mean by that?
Brett
-
Hi Brett,
Don't forget to add an images sitemap, as Google is pretty hot on those, and make sure you do some good image marketing as well.
But what you suggest is absolutely fine. From the main Sitemap, Google will find all of the others as well.
Just as a note, do make sure you know which pages need more crawling through using the last modified date. This will help them know which pages they should be recrawling more often.
-Andy
-
Hi brett,
Yeap, the hierarchy is ok. You should keep in mind to only submit to index the pages that are of yout interest and dont generate duplicate content, just a reminder.
Then, just submit every sitemap to search console.
Hope it helps.
GR.
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
-
Paginated Pages Page Depth
Hi Everyone, I was wondering how Google counts the page depth on paginated pages. DeepCrawl is showing our primary pages as being 6+ levels deep, but without the blog or with an infinite scroll on the /blog/ page, I believe it would be only 2 or 3 levels deep. Using Moz's blog as an example, is https://moz.com/blog?page=2 treated to be on the same level in terms of page depth as https://moz.com/blog? If so is it the https://site.comcom/blog" /> and https://site.com/blog?page=3" /> code that helps Google recognize this? Or does Google treat the page depth the same way that DeepCrawl is showing it with the blog posts on page 2 being +1 in page depth compared to the ones on page 1, for example? Thanks, Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyRSB0 -
Is Canonical Tags a Good Option With 2 Similar Sites?
I have an existing ecommerce site, on a Yahoo platform. I have recently started a different site on the Magento platform with substantially/almost entirely the same products and categories. For various reasons, I won't be ready to do a 301 redirect to the new domain for about another 8 months. I have 4 questions: Is it a good idea to use canonical tags in the meantime? Is there a way to know if the is cannibalization between the sites? They rank for different keywords. Will I lose all traffic and rankings for the Yahoo site if I go the canonical route? If I remove the canonical tags at a later point, will the ranking and traffic of the Yahoo site come back? Thanks in advance for your advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kevin_Hatanian0 -
Competing Pages on Ecommerce Site - Very Frustrating
We have multiple issues with this situation. We rank #1 for "Lace Fabric", #3 for "Lace Trim", and #80 for "Lace". We also rank for "Lace Ribbon", and "Lace Appliques". The Lace Fabric and Lace Trim pages have plenty of backlinks, wherein may lie the problem. We have a similar issue for "Satin". "Silk Satin", "Polyester Satin", "Satin Trim", "Satin Ribbon", etc. This is a very annoying and common pattern. Our backlink profile is sterling, and our competitors with inferior backlink profiles and branded search are outranking us. We outrank them across the board for 2 word terms. Based on my evaluation of TF/CF, PA/DA, Content, etc., we should be on page 1 for "Lace". IMHO, these pages are competing for the head term. Any ideas on how to eliminate this issue to rank for head terms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GWMSEO0 -
New Site (redesign) Launched Without 301 Redirects to New Pages - Too Late to Add Redirects?
We recently launched a redesign/redevelopment of a site but failed to put 301 redirects in place for the old URL's. It's been about 2 months. Is it too late to even bother worrying about it at this point? The site has seen a notable decrease in site traffic/visits, perhaps due to this issue. I assume that once the search engines get an error on a URL, it will remove it from displaying in search results after a period of time. I'm just not sure if they will try to re-crawl those old URLs at some point and if so, it may be worth it to have those 301 redirects in place. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandBuilder0 -
Xml sitemap Issue... Xml sitemap generator facilitating only few pages for indexing
Help me I have a website earlier 10,000 WebPages were facilitated in xml sitemap for indexation, but from last few days xml sitemap generator facilitating only 3300 WebPages for indexing. Please help me to resolve the issue. I have checked Google webmaster indexed pages, its showing 8,141. I have tried 2-3 paid tools, but all are facilitating 3300 pages for indexing. I am not getting what is the exact problem, whether the server not allowing or the problem with xml sitemap generator. Please please help me…
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | udistm0 -
Submitting XML Sitemap for large website: how big?
Hi there, I’m currently researching how I can generate an XML sitemap for a large website we run. We think that Google is having problems indexing the URLs based on some of the messages we have been receiving in Webmaster tools, which also shows a large drop in the total number of indexed pages. Content on this site can be accessed in two ways. On the home page, the content appears as a list of posts. Users can search for previous posts and can search all the way back to the first posts that were submitted. Posts are also categorised using tags, and these tags can also currently be crawled by search engines. Users can then click on tags to see articles covering similar subjects. A post could have multiple tags (e.g. SEO, inbound marketing, Technical SEO) and so can be reached in multiple ways by users, creating a large number of URLs to index. Finally, my questions are: How big should a sitemap be? What proportion of the URLs of a website should it cover? What are the best tools for creating the sitemaps of large websites? How often should a sitemap be updated? Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Links to images on a page diluting page value?
We have been doing some testing with additional images on a page. For example, the page here:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter264
http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/2550/sukhoi-su-27-flanker-package-for-fsx/ Notice the images under the heading Images/Screenshots After adding these images, we noticed a ranking drop for that page (-27 places) in the SERPS. Could the large amount of images - in particular the links on the images (links to the larger versions) be causing it to dilute the value of the actual page? Any suggestions, advice or opinions will be much appreciated.0 -
Questions about turning my wordpress site into an ecommerce site. Experience needed.
I have a wordpress site that is about a product that is now getting some great traffic. Right now It has affiliate stuff on it. I want to sell my own product so I will be turning this wordpress site into an ecommerce site. I want to redesign it so I am not looking for simple plugins to just add a cart. The part I am really confused about is what to do with my posts and categories? How does that work when turning this site into an ecommerce site? Lets say the site is "hats for adults" My post pages are things like "funny hats for adults", "hats for adult men" etc etc. Would I turn these posts pages into like category pages that have a category of products. Or should I create real categories and have my developer turn those into the ecommerce category pages and then redirect my posts to those categories? Maybe I don't even know what I am talking about. Is this even making sense? This is a small site (5posts and 1 category) and most of the traffic will come from the homepage keywords anyways.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PEnterprises0