Site Map Help Please

[bensim90]

Hello,

Looking for a bit of help please, I am on godaddy central using the current builder with SEO been a struggle with how limited the builder is! Never mind.

So the sitemap which located at https://www.MYDOMAIN.com/sitemap.xml is there and i can access it.

1. I ran some SEO tools an they claim my page is not utilising a sitemap file??
2. What should I do??
3. Does goDaddy automatically updated and submit it to the search engines for crawling or do I need to do this??
4. Is there any benefit from an SEO point of view if I insert a hyperlink to the sitemap at the foot of my site, will it make it easier for the engines and these tools to see it??

Any and all help would be great please and thank you.

[Muse · Accepted solution]

@bensim90 

Your site map should update when you update your site.  GoDaddy does not submit your XML sitemap to search engines.   That's for you to do.

You'll want to submit your site map to Google and Bing.  This will let them know you have a site map and to index it.   This will also give you the ability to track any crawl errors or issues search engines may have with your site.  You should also get your site verified with both while you are at it.

Once you submit your sitemap there is no need to have a link to the XML sitemap on your site.  But... it's not a bad idea to also have a site map for humans that folks can go to if they want to drill down quickly to what they are looking for.

HTH! 😉

[ntidaddy]

Do you know if i can modify my sitemap.xml file to include ALL of my pages on my site? Right now it only has TWO pages. My main home page and my mobile home page. But i have over 100 pages on my site. I know how to manually create a site map but how is it implemented into WB7?

Please advise.

[GaryA]

Hi @ntidaddy.

If you are using Website Builder v7, the sitemap actually a sitemap index. It links to 2 different sitemaps, one for desktop and one for mobile.

They'd be available at
yoursite.tld/sitemap.desktop.xml

yoursite.tld/sitemap.mobile.xml

You should see all of your pages at those sitemaps.

^Gary

[ntidaddy]

HI Gary i am not sure if you can see my other posts in this thread :

https://www.godaddy.com/community/Building-and-Managing-a-Website/Site-map-with-Website-Builder-vers...  

But i guess what i am wondering is if what GoDaddy submits is :

(naplestech.com/sitemap.xml) which only shows the two SUB sitemaps (sitemap.desktop.xml and sitemap.mobile.xml). If you go to either of these two from THERE,  yes it will show ALL of my sites pages.

But. Google will only see these 2 urls here (or will Google auto redirect to the appropriate Desktop or Mobile XML?). I want all of my 100+ pages to be shown in the sitemap for full indexing, not just the 2 that WB7 produces.

Thank you for your input i have looked all over for this answer.

Len

[GaryA]

Hi @ntidaddy.

I'm not sure what the issue is that you are describing. The sitemap is generally only used to index your site and your pages for search engines. When Google is crawling your site, it doesn't need to know if it's mobile or desktop pages. It's only important that it crawls all of your pages.

Google does follow sitemap indexes, like the one used by Website Builder v7, so Google will crawl of the the pages. 

^Gary

[ntidaddy]

Hi Gary that was what i was looking for. To know that Google can read a "sitemap index' then send the person to either the full desktop or mobile sitemap.xml. I was not sure Google did that but glad to know they do.

Thank you

[Cliffb56]

Well, this is strange...

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.

<hash>

<script/>

<errors>Not Found</errors>

</hash>