Do we need to manually submit a sitemap every time, or can we host it on our site as /sitemap and Google will see & crawl it?
-
I realized we don't have a sitemap in place, so we're going to get one built. Once we do, I'll submit it manually to Google via Webmaster tools.
However, we have a very dynamic site with content constantly being added. Will I need to keep manually re-submitting the sitemap to Google? Or could we have the continually updating sitemap live on our site at /sitemap and the crawlers will just pick it up from there? I noticed this is what SEOmoz does at http://www.seomoz.org/sitemap.
-
Thanks, Ryan. I was confusing those.
To execute the sitemap index, would I just point the crawlers to the index? Do you have any links to overviews of how to set that up?
-
There are also scripts you can purchase for very little cost and have them install it for you on your server and set up a cron job to have your sitemap run automatically each week and ping the search engines to find your sitemap.
One such service is at xml-sitemaps.com - they can install it for you and set up the cron job as well.
Just make sure you are on a good server that can handle the script if your website is large.
-
I think you may be getting xml sitemaps confused with sitemap pages. Your xml sitemap should live at /sitemap.xml as Alan pointed out. The seomoz and other sites that have a /sitemap page is for different purposes. Its not your xml file, its a "topical guide" to your website and all the major sections of your site.
Remember that you can also create a xml sitemap index if you need to have different sitemaps (video, news, content) that houses all the different xml sitemaps underneath it.
-
Typically I use /sitemap.xml
I dont think it matters what you call it, as long as its submitted to Google webmaster tools.
Check out sitemaps.org for more info on how to create a quality sitemap
-
Great, thanks!
Should we also have it live at /sitemap, as SEOmoz does?
-
Yes they will pick it up, you can put the address in your robots.txt file,
http://thatsit.com.au/robots.txt
then you dont need to submit it and all search engines will find it.
Keeep it up todate, free from 404's, 301's all urls should be status code 200, and keep it accurate. Bing for one will igniore it if it is not clean and acurate, they allow only a couple of percent error rate.
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
-
Sitemap.xml strategy for site with thousands of pages
I have a client that has a HUGE website with thousands of product pages. We don't currently have a sitemap.xml because it would take so much power to map the sitemap. I have thought about creating a sitemap for the key pages on the website - but didn't want to hurt the SEO on the thousands of product pages. If you have a sitemap.xml that only has some of the pages on your site - will it negatively impact the other pages, that Google has indexed - but are not listed on the sitemap.xml.
Technical SEO | | jerrico10 -
Site removed from Google Index
Hi mozers, Two months ago we published http://aquacion.com We registered it in the Google Webmaster tools and after a few day the website was in the index no problem. But now the webmaster tools tell us the URLs were manually removed. I've look everywhere in the webmaster tools in search for more clues but haven't found anything that would help me. I sent the acces to the client, who might have been stupid enough to remove his own site from the Google index, but now, even though I delete and add the sitemap again, the website won't show in Google SERPs. What's weird is that Google Webmaster Tools tells us all the page are indexed. I'm totally clueless here... Ps. : Added screenshots from Google Webmaster Tools. Update Turns out it was my mistake after all. When my client developped his website a few months ago, he published it, and I removed the website from the Google Index. When the website was finished I submited the sitemap, thinking it would void the removal request, but it don't. How to solve In webmaster tools, in the [Google Index => Remove URLs] page, you can reinclude pages there. tGib0
Technical SEO | | RichardPicard0 -
Site architecture & breadcrumbs
Hi A client hasn't structured site architecture in a silo type format so breadcrumbs are not predicating in a topical hierarchy as one would desire (or at least i think one would prefer) For example: say the site is called www.fruit.com and it has a category called 'types of fruit' and then sub/content pages called things like 'apples' and 'pears'. So in terms of architecture that should be: www.fruit.com/types-of-fruit/apples and www.fruit.com/types-of-fruit/pears etc etc The client has kept it all flat so instead architecture is: www.fruit.com/types-of-fruit and www.fruit.com/apples and www.fruit.com/pears As a result breadcrumbs follow suit and hence since also not employing logical predication dont reflect the topical & sub-topical hierarchy I have seen that some seo's at least used to think this was better for seo since kept the page/s nearer the root but surely its better to structure site architecture in a logical topical hierarchy so long as dont go beyond say 3 or 4 directories/forward slashes in the url's? Also is it theoretically possible to keep url structure as is (flat) and just edit/customise the breadcrumbs to reflect a topical hierarchy in a silo structure rather than change the entire site architecture & required 301'ing etc in order to do this (or is that misleading or just not possible?) Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
My sitemap in Google is coming back with an error
I submitted my xml sitemap to Google Webmaster tools. It is giving an error, not found. 404 Error. But I can't figure out why my site map is signaling a 404. Why? 😞
Technical SEO | | cschwartzel0 -
Are multiple sites needed to rank one website?
My SEO guy for a mortgage website says that we should have 30 websites, with about 250 pages each on each site plus 50 blogs in order to even think of ranking for mortgage keywords. Is that correct?
Technical SEO | | simermeet0 -
Link to Articles for news sites in Google SERPs
I'm trying to figure out why when I search for "international news" or "world news", for example, some sites in the SERPs have links to news articles, while others don't. For "international news", result of Fox News and New York Times have links to articles, while CNN (the top result), only have sitelinks. I would appreciate any theories on why this happens. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | seoFan210 -
How can i see the pages that cause duplicate content?
SEOmoz PRO is giving me back duplicate content errors. However, i don't see how i can get a list of pages that are duplicate to the one shown. If i don't know which pages/urls cause the issue i can't really fix it. The only way would be placing canonical tags but that's not always the best solution. Is there a way to see the actual duplicate pages?
Technical SEO | | 5MMedia0 -
Why do I see dramatic differences in impressions between Google Webmaster Tools and Google Insights for Search?
Has anyone else noticed discrepancies between these tools? Take keyword A and keyword B. I've literally seen situations where A has 3 or 4 times the traffic as B in Google Webmaster Tools, but half the traffic of B in Google Insights for Search. What might be the reason for this discrepancy?
Technical SEO | | ir-seo-account0