XML sitemaps have a couple of limitations: A maximum of 50,000 URLs. An uncompressed file size limit of 50MB. Sitemaps can be compressed using gzip (the file name would become something similar to sitemap.xml.gz) to save bandwidth for your server. But once unzipped, the sitemap still can’t exceed either limit.
HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 Whenever you exceed either limit, you will need to split your URLs across multiple XML sitemaps. Those sitemaps can then be combined into a single XML sitemap index file, often named sitemap-index.xml. Essentially, a sitemap for sitemaps. For exceptionally large websites who want to take a more granular approach, you can also create multiple sitemap index files. For example: sitemap-index-articles.xml sitemap-index-products.xml sitemap-index-categories.xml But be aware that you cannot nest sitemap index files. For search engines to easily find every one of your sitemap files at once, you will want to: Submit your sitemap index(s) to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Specify your sitemap index URL(s) in your robots.txt file. Pointing search engines directly to your sitemap as you welcome them to crawl. You can also submit sitemaps by pinging them to Google. But beware: Google no longer pays attention to hreflang entries in “unverified sitemaps”, which Tom Anthony believes to mean those submitted via the ping URL.
XML Image Sitemap Image sitemaps were designed to improve the indexation of image content. In modern-day SEO, however, images are embedded within page content, so will be crawled along with the page URL. Moreover, it’s best practice to utilize JSON-LD schema.org/ ImageObject markup to call out image properties to search engines as it provides more attributes than an image XML sitemap. Because of this, an XML image sitemap is unnecessary for most websites. Including an image sitemap would only waste crawl budget. HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 The exception to this is if images help drive your business, such as a stock photo website or ecommerce site gaining product page sessions from Google Image search. Know that images don’t have to to be on the same domain as your website to be submitted in a sitemap. You can use a CDN as long as it’s verified in Search Console. XML Video Sitemap Similar to images, if videos are critical to your business, submit an XML video sitemap.If not, a video sitemap is unnecessary. Save your crawl budget for the page the video is embedded into, ensuring you markup all videos with JSON-LD as a schema.org/ VideoObject. Google News Sitemap Only sites registered with Google News should use this sitemap. If you are, include articles published in the last two days, up to a limit of 1,000 URLs per sitemap, and update with fresh articles as soon as they’re published. Contrary to some online advice, Google News sitemaps don’t support image URL. Google recommends using schema.org image or og:image to specify your article thumbnail for Google News.
HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 Mobile Sitemap This is not needed for most websites. Why? Because Mueller confirmed mobile sitemaps are for feature phone pages only. Not for smartphone-compatibility. So unless you have unique URLs specifically designed for featured phones, a mobile sitemap will be of no benefit. HTML Sitemap XML sitemaps take care of search engine needs. HTML sitemaps were designed to assist human users to find content. The question becomes, if you have a good user experience and well crafted internal links, do you need a HTML sitemap? Check the page views of your HTML sitemap in Google Analytics. Chances are, it’s very low. If not, it’s a good indication that you need to improve your website navigation. HTML sitemaps are generally linked in website footers. Taking link equity from every single page of your website. Ask yourself. Is that the best use of that link equity? Or are you including HTML sitemap as a nod to legacy website best practices? If few humans use it. And search engines don’t need it as you have strong internal linking and an XML sitemap. Does that HTML sitemap have a reason to exist? I would argue no. HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 Dynamic XML Sitemap Static sitemaps are simple to create using a tool such as Screaming Frog. The problem is, as soon as you create or remove a page, your sitemap is outdated. If you modify the content of a page, the sitemap won’t automatically update the lastmod tag. So unless you love manually creating and uploading sitemaps for every single change, it’s best to avoid static sitemaps. Dynamic XML sitemaps, on the other hand, are automatically update by your server to reflect relevant website changes as they occur. To create a dynamic XML sitemap: Ask you developer to code a custom script, being sure to provide clear specifications Use a dynamic sitemap generator tool Install a plugin for your CMS, for example the Yoast SEO plugin for Wordpress HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 Key Takeaway Dynamic XML sitemaps and a sitemap index are modern best practice. Mobile and HTML sitemaps are not. Use image, video and Google News sitemaps only if improved indexation of these content types drive your KPIs.
HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 XML Sitemap Indexation Optimization Now for the fun part. How do you use XML sitemaps to drive SEO KPIs. Only Include SEO Relevant Pages in XML Sitemaps An XML sitemap is a list of pages you recommend to be crawled, which isn’t necessarily every page of your website. A search spider arrives at your website with an “allowance” for how many pages it will crawl. The XML sitemap indicates you consider the included URLs to be more important than those that aren’t blocked but aren’t in the sitemap. You are using it to tell search engines “I’d really appreciate it if you’d focus on these URLs in particular”. Essentially, it helps you use crawl budget effectively. By including only SEO relevant pages, you help search engines crawl your site more intelligently in order to reap the benefits of better indexation.
HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 You should exclude: Non-canonical pages. Duplicate pages. Paginated pages. Parameter or session ID based URLs. Site search result pages. Reply to comment URLs. Share via email URLs. URLs created by filtering that are unnecessary for SEO. Archive pages. Any redirections (3xx), missing pages (4xx) or server error pages (5xx). Pages blocked by robots.txt. Pages with noindex. Resource pages accessible by a lead gen form (e.g. white paper PDFs). Utility pages that are useful to users, but not intended to be landing pages (login page, contact us, privacy policy, account pages, etc.).
HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 I want to share an example from Michael Cottam about prioritising pages: Say your website has 1,000 pages. 475 of those 1,000 pages are SEO relevant content. You highlight those 475 pages in an XML sitemap, essentially asking Google to deprioritize indexing the remainder.
HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 Now, let’s say Google crawls those 475 pages, and algorithmically decides that 175 are “A” grade, 200 are “B+”, and 100 “B” or “B-”. That’s a strong average grade, and probably indicates a quality website to which to send users. Contrast that against submitting all 1,000 pages via the XML sitemap. Now, Google looks at the 1,000 pages you say are SEO relevant content, and sees over 50 percent are “D” or “F” pages. Your average grade isn’t looking so good anymore and that may harm your organic sessions. But remember, Google is going to use your XML sitemap only as a clue to what’s important on your site. Just because it’s not in your XML sitemap doesn’t necessarily mean that Google won’t index those pages. When it comes to SEO, overall site quality is a key factor. To assess the quality of your site, turn to the sitemap related reporting in Google Search Console (GSC). Key Takeaway Manage crawl budget by limiting XML sitemap URLs only to SEO relevant pages and invest time to reduce the number of low quality pages on your website. HOW
TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 Fully Leverage Sitemap Reporting The sitemaps section in the new Google Search Console is not as data rich as what was previously offered. It’s primary use now is to confirm your sitemap index has been successfully submitted. If you have chosen to use descriptive naming conventions, rather than numeric, you can also get a feel for the number of different types of SEO pages that have been “discovered” - aka all URLs found by Google via sitemaps as well as other methods such as following links. In the new GSC, the more valuable area for SEOs in regard to sitemaps is the Index Coverage report. The report will default to “All known pages”. Here you can: Address any “Error” or “Valid with warnings” issues.
These often stem from conflicting robots directives. One solved, be sure to validate your fix via the Coverage report. Look at indexation trends. Most sites are continually adding valuable content, so “Valid” pages (aka those indexed by Google) should steadily increase. Understand the cause of any dramatic changes. Select “Valid” and look in details for the type “Indexed, not submitted in sitemap”. These are pages where you and Google disagree on their value. For example, you may not have submitted your privacy policy URL, but Google has indexed the page. In such cases, there’s no actions to be taken. What you need to be looking out for are indexed URLs which stem from poor pagination handling, poor parameter handling, duplicate content or pages being accidently left out of sitemaps.
HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 Afterwards, limit the report to the SEO relevant URLs you have included in your sitemap by changing the drop down to “All submitted pages”. Then check the details of all “Excluded” pages. Reasons for exclusion of sitemap URLs can be put into four action groups:
1. Quick wins: For duplicate content, canoncials, robots directives, 40X HTTP status codes, redirects or legalities exclusions put in place the appropriate fix.
2. Investigate page: For both “Submitted URL dropped” and “Crawl anomaly” exclusions investigate further by using the Fetch as Google tool.
3.Improve page: For “Crawled - currently not indexed” pages, review the page (or page type as generally it will be many URLs of a similar breed) content and internal links. Chances are, it’s suffering from thin content, unoriginal content or is orphaned.
4. Improve domain: For “Discovered - currently not indexed” pages, Google notes the typical reason for exclusion as they “tried to crawl the URL but the site was overloaded”.
Don’t be fooled. It’s more likely that Google decided “it’s not worth the effort” to crawl due to poor internal linking or low content quality seen from the domain. If you see a larger number of these exclusions, review the SEO value of the page (or page types) you have submitted via sitemaps, focus on optimising crawl budget as well as review your information architecture, including parameters, from both an link and content perspective.
HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 Whatever your plan of action, be sure to note down benchmark KPIs. The most useful metric to assess the impact of sitemap optimisation efforts is the “All submitted pages” indexation rate - calculated by taking the percentage of valid pages out of total discovered URLs. Work to get this above 80 percent. Why not to 100 percent? Because if you have focussed all your energy on ensuring every SEO relevant URL you currently have is indexed, you likely missed opportunities to expand your content coverage. Key Takeaway In addition to identifying warnings and errors, you can use the Index Coverage report as an XML sitemap sleuthing tool to isolate indexation problems. Note: If you are a larger website who has chosen to break their site down into multiple sitemap indexes, you will be able to filter by those indexes. This will not only allow you to: 1. See the overview chart on a more granular level. 2. See a larger number of relevant examples when investigating a type of exclusion. 3. Tackle indexation rate optimisation section by section.
HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO 3 XML Sitemap Best Practice Checklist Do invest time to: Compress sitemap files using gzip Use a sitemap index file Use image, video and Google news sitemaps only if indexation drives your KPIs Dynamically generate XML sitemaps Ensure URLs are included only in a single sitemap Reference sitemap index URL(s) in robots.txt Submit sitemap index to both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools Include only SEO relevant pages in XML sitemaps Fix all errors and warnings Analyse trends and types of valid pages Calculate submitted pages indexation rate Address causes of exclusion for submitted pages Now, go check your own sitemap and make sure you’re doing it right. HOW TO USE XML SITEMAPS TO BOOST SEO
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