How to sitemap only top level taxonomy terms

#371186
  • Resolved Graeme Harris

    3 years, 7 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hi there,

    regarding sitemap settings, is there a way to only include top level term archive pages within a taxonomy when turning on the setting to include a particular taxonomy within the site map?

    Specifically in my case this is for a directory style part of my website which I am in the process of publishing, in which I’m using the structure, for example, .com/laundromats-near-me/state/city

    “Laundromats Near Me” being the taxonomy, which includes 50 state archive pages within it, and each state includes city pages below that.

    If I set the taxonomy to be included in the site map, that will be 50 archive pages for the states, but if the sub category, city, archive pages are included, now there are over 400 archive pages in that site map and there for google to index.

    My concern is if I include all of these in the sitemap at once, this may take ages for google to index, and I think maybe it would be wiser to only include the top level, state, archive pages first, wait until they’re indexed, and then include the city archive pages next.

    Is there a way to do this in the RankMath settings?

    Or maybe there is a snippet of noindex or “don’t include in sitemap” code that I can put on the city archive page template that will keep it out of the site map until a later time?

    Thanks for the insights 🙂

    G

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Jaideep Asrani

    3 years, 7 months ago

    Hello,

    Thanks for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.

    To exclude the sub-taxonomy URLs from your sitemap, you will have to manually Noindex your sub-taxonomies from the advanced tab of the metabox.

    Hope this helps. Let us know if you need any other assistance.

    Graeme Harris

    3 years, 7 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Sorry just to be clear.. Where do I find the advanced tab of the metabox?

    This should be on the archive page editor I guess?

    I’m not sure why it isn’t showing, but I don’t see any Rankmath settings on the block page editor or the classic editor for the archive page.

    This setting would effectively just be placing the HTML code within the header of the page like this?

    <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />

    which I found here,
    https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/robots/robots_meta_tag

    If this is the case then I may be able to manually insert this code onto the archive page.

    Does the inclusion of this line of code,
    <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />
    or
    <meta name=”robots” content=”index” />

    dictate whether pages are included in my website’s sitemap that RankMath generates?

    Or is there something else that dictates whether or not the page is included in my Rankmath site map?

    Thank you for the help understanding how Rankmath builds the sitemap 🙂

    G

    Reinelle

    3 years, 7 months ago

    Hello,

    Yes, setting those pages to noindex in Rank Math’s Advanced tab will replace the meta robot like you shared.

    Please note that some options are only available when you enable the Advanced Mode in Rank Math. If it’s not showing, you must have chosen to use Easy Mode. Please follow the steps in this link to switch to Advanced Mode:
    https://rankmath.com/kb/advanced-mode/

    Also, please ensure that this option is enabled for your archive post type in Rank Math > Titles & Meta > [Archive Post type]

    Post type

    I hope that helps.

    Thank you.

    Graeme Harris

    3 years, 7 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hi Reinelle,

    thanks this does help, reminded me of a few places to look.

    I do have advanced mode turned on, and now after enabling SEO page controls I can go in to each individual taxonomy term and change whether to index them or not.

    The challenge I face is that within this taxonomy, there are 493 sub taxonomies (50 some odd states, and 440 some odd cities, these 440 cities or so which I wanted to leave out of the site map for now).

    There is no bulk edit option that I can see to change all of these sub taxonomies (cities) to no index.

    Do you have a suggestion around that or something that I may be missing?

    Back to my earlier question also, if there is no way to easily apply this to all 440 sub taxonomies, what about adding a snippet of code to the archive page template which I design for those sub taxonomies, including something like,
    <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />

    Could this work?

    What are your thoughts?

    Thank you again so much, I’m learning a lot from Rankmath!

    Jaideep Asrani

    3 years, 7 months ago

    Hello,

    Using the filter to add the Noindex robots meta tag will mark the taxonomies as Noindex but it will not exclude them from the sitemap.

    So you will have to mark them as Noindex from the metabox if you want them to be excluded from the sitemap.

    Let us know if you need any other assistance.

    Thanks.

    Graeme Harris

    3 years, 7 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Ok so to keep them out of the sitemap the pages need to be individually set to no index from the metabox on the page edit screen.

    Is there a way to do this in bulk?

    I have hundreds of sub taxonomy pages I would like to apply this to, that would be a nightmare page by page.

    Thanks again
    G

    Reinelle

    3 years, 6 months ago

    Hello,

    Unfortunately, we don’t have an option for setting those pages to noindex in bulk with Rank Math free version. If you set the default robots in Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Categories > Robots Meta to noindex, your other 50 categories will be affected, unless you edit them individually in the advanced tab to index.

    However, with Rank Math PRO, you can easily set them to index by using the bulk action feature or via CSV:
    https://rankmath.com/kb/bulk-editing-in-rank-math/#bulk-actions
    https://rankmath.com/kb/editing-seo-meta-at-scale/

    Looking forward to helping you.

    Thank you.

    Graeme Harris

    3 years, 6 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Thank you, good to know that this is doable in the pro version.

    Reinelle

    3 years, 6 months ago

    Hello,

    Glad that helped.

    Please feel free to reach out to us again in case you need any other assistance.

    We are here to help.

    Thank you.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

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