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.
Hreflang in header...should I do a Sitemap?
-
A client implemented hreflang tags in the site header. MOZ says you aren't supposed to do an hreflang Sitemap as well. My question is how should I do a Sitemap now (or should I do one at all)?
-
Hi there,
There are many ways to do it. In my opinion:
- If the amount of pages is low, you can do it in just one sitemap.
- If the amount is really huge, do it in different sitemaps, stating in the name of each of them the language (e.g. sitemap-es-mx.xml) and create a sitemap_index.hml with all those.
Remember that its best practice to have the sitemaps in the root folder: domain.com/sitemap
Best luck.
GR. -
Hi Gaston - Thanks for the response. My urls are set up like so:
- mysite.com/us/en/page
- mysite.com/fr/fr/page
- mysite.com/ca/fr/page
- mysite.com/mx/es/page
- mysite.com/es/es/page
And so on. Would you recommend doing a separate sitemap for each language/country? Thus:
- mysite.com/us/en/sitemap.xml
- mysite.com/fr/fr/sitemap.xml
- mysite.com/ca/fr/sitemap.xml
- mysite.com/mx/es/sitemap.xml
- mysite.com/es/es/sitemap.xml
Thanks!
-
Hello there!
Yes you should, better you must do a sitemap, but do not include the hreflang attribute.
Here: Google Search Console help you can see how a sitemap INCLUDING the hreflang looks like. Remove the portion:<xhtml:link <br="">rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"
/></xhtml:link>Hope it helps.
Good Luck!
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
-
Spotify XML Sitemap
All, Working on an SEO work up for a Spotify site. Looks like they are using a sitemap that links to additional pages. A problem, none of the links are actually linked within the sitemap. This feels like a strong error. https://lubricitylabs.com/sitemap.xml Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dmaher0 -
Top hierarchy pages vs footer links vs header links
Hi All, We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Canonical tag + HREFLANG vs NOINDEX: Redundant?
Hi, We launched our new site back in Sept 2013 and to control indexation and traffic, etc we only allowed the search engines to index single dimension pages such as just category, brand or collection but never both like category + brand, brand + collection or collection + catergory We are now opening indexing to double faceted page like category + brand and the new tag structure would be: For any other facet we're including a "noindex, follow" meta tag. 1. My question is if we're including a "noindex, follow" tag to select pages do we need to include a canonical or hreflang tag afterall? Should we include it either way for when we want to remove the "noindex"? 2. Is the x-default redundant? Thanks for any input. Cheers WMCA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WMCA0 -
Where is the best place to put a sitemap for a site with local content?
I have a simple site that has cities as subdirectories (so URL is root/cityname). All of my content is localized for the city. My "root" page simply links to other cities. I very specifically want to rank for "topic" pages for each city and I'm trying to figure out where to put the sitemap so Google crawls everything most efficiently. I'm debating the following options, which one is better? Put the sitemap on the footer of "root" and link to all popular pages across cities. The advantage here is obviously that the links are one less click away from root. Put the sitemap on the footer of "city root" (e.g. root/cityname) and include all topics for that city. This is how Yelp does it. The advantage here is that the content is "localized" but the disadvantage is it's further away from the root. Put the sitemap on the footer of "city root" and include all topics across all cities. That way wherever Google comes into the site they'll be close to all topics I want to rank for. Thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcgoodrich0 -
XML Sitemap on another domain
Hi, We've rebuilt our website and created a better sitemap index structure. There's a good chance that we not be able to append the XML files to existing site for technical reasons (don't get me started). I'm reaching out because I'm wondering if can we place the XML files on another website or subdomain? I know this is not best practice and probably very grey but I'm looking for alternatives. If there answer is DON'T DO IT let me know too. Thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WMCA0 -
Urls missing from product_cat sitemap
I'm using Yoast SEO plugin to generate XML sitemaps on my e-commerce site (woocommerce). I recently changed the category structure and now only 25 of about 75 product categories are included. Is there a way to manually include urls or what is the best way to have them all indexed in the sitemap?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kisen0 -
Sitemaps. When compressed do you use the .gz file format or the (untidy looking, IMHO) .xml.gz format?
When submitting compressed sitemaps to Google I normally use the a file named sitemap.gz A customer is banging on that his web guy says that sitemap.xml.gz is a better format. Google spiders sitemap.gz just fine and in Webmaster Tools everything looks OK... Interested to know other SEOmoz Pro's preferences here and also to check I haven't made an error that is going to bite me in the ass soon! Over to you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoisyLittleMonkey0