Sitemap: What is worth inserting and what is not?

#522763
  • Resolved musacco

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Good evening Staff,

    I’m creating a new eCommerce site with WooCommerce and I’ve recently installed the free version of Rank Math to see if it’s right for us.

    In the meantime, I’m using the installation wizard to familiarize myself with your Plugin. In the Sitemap configuration step I would like to understand the ideal setting to start off on the right foot: I use Flatsome as a theme.

    Should I uncheck UX Blocks? Portofilio, Portfolio Categories and Portfolio Tags if we don’t use it, do we deselect it?

    Furthermore, being a shop, is it also convenient to include the Product Categories in the sitemap? The Product Tags (which I can’t find here) maybe it’s better not to insert them?

    Thanks so much for your patience

    Antonio

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 17 total)
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  • Reinelle

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math and bringing your concern to our attention.

    If you’re not using those post types, you can unselect/exclude those from your sitemaps. Please note that you include the post type where you wanted them to be discovered and indexed by search engines.

    The same goes with your product categories/tags, if they don’t have unique content in them and just display your products, you can exclude them from your sitemap.

    Those pages are prone to duplicate content issues with search engines as well as compete for keywords with more important products/pages.

    Hope that helps.

    Thank you.

    musacco

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hello,

    thanks a lot for the reply. I’m trying to make the right settings in order not to make mistakes… and then, in a few weeks, I would like to buy the Pro Version of Rank Math.

    So when it comes to “Public Content Types” I de-select “UX Blocks”, “Portfolio” and also “Articles” since I use them for now and I don’t even use “Blog”, is that correct?

    Instead as regards “Public Taxonomies” I de-select everything, that is, even “Categories” (if they refer to the “Blog” which I don’t use for now), Is the procedure correct?

    Thanks so much for your patience.

    Antonio

    Reinelle

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Hello,

    Yes, those procedures are correct if you’re not using them.

    Also, you may need to set those pages from those post types to avoid getting this error in your Search Console account:
    https://rankmath.com/kb/indexed-not-submitted-in-sitemap/

    Here’s a link you can follow for that (for unused post types):
    https://rankmath.com/kb/how-to-noindex-urls/#noindex-post-type

    Hope that helps.

    Thank you.

    musacco

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hello,

    thank you very much for your very important information.

    I’m already making the settings following your instructions. But I still have to set other customizations. I wanted to know, do I have to index these pages too?

    Link:

    https://example.com/contact/
    https://example.com/about/
    https://example.com/termini-e-condizioni-di-vendita/
    https://example.com/my-account/
    https://example.com/checkout/
    https://example.com/cart/
    https://example.com/wishlist/
    https://example.com/pagamento/
    https://example.com/track-order/

    Should I keep them in Index or Noindex?

    Thank you very much for your availability, much appreciated.

    Antonio

    Reinelle

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Hello,

    We do not recommend indexing those pages that are unique to every user on your site like my-account, checkout, cart, and wishlist.

    The rest, since they provide useful content, you can set them to index.

    Hope that helps.

    Thank you.

    musacco

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hi,

    thank you for your precious support. So, to recap:

    NOINDEX:
    https://example.com/my-account/
    https://example.com/checkout/
    https://example.com/cart/
    https://example.com/wishlist/
    https://example.com/pagamento/
    https://example.com/track-order/

    INDEX:
    https://example.com/contact/
    https://example.com/about/
    https://example.com/termini-e-condizioni-di-vendita/
    https://example.com/privacy-policy/
    https://example.com/politica-di-rimborso-e-resi

    Is this a correct procedure?

    I have two other issues related to the Sitemap that we would like to understand:

    1) https://example.com/blog/

    If I don’t use the company Blog at the moment, do I insert Noindex here too?

    2) Rank Math —> Sitemap Setup —> General —> Sitemap Links —>
    Maximum number of links on each sitemap page —> 200

    What does it mean? What if I upload 250 products to the sitemap only 200 go and the other 50 don’t?

    Thank you very much for your attention and sorry if I’m asking so many questions.

    Sure of your answer

    I send best regards.

    Antonio

    Reinelle

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Hello,

    Yes, that should work fine on your setup.

    1. If you’re referring to your blog page and you’re not going to index the posts inside it, then it is recommended to set it to noindex.

    2. No, Rank Math automatically creates another sub-sitemap for your pages. In your example, the other 50 will be placed then in /product-sitemap2.xml and the 200 will be on /product-sitemap1.xml.

    Google crawls small-sized sitemaps faster. With this in mind, Rank math uses the links per sitemap limit to break down sitemaps into smaller parts. You can also check Google’s guidelines for sitemaps:
    https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/sitemaps/build-sitemap

    Hope that helps.

    Thank you.

    musacco

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hello,

    excellent explanation. Thank you very much!

    If instead I wanted – for example – to put the Index only on 2 Product Categories and keep the other 10 as NoIndex, instead put the NoIndex to all Product Categories from the Rank Math sitemap settings, what should I do?

    Sorry if I take advantage of your patience, but I’d like to have an ad hoc configuration and then switch to the Pro version, once the various settings have been set to the best.

    Thank you very much indeed.

    Antonio

    Rakibuzzaman Siam

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Hello,

    We deeply apologize for the delay in response.

    It is entirely up to you if you want to index only two product categories and not the others. Please note that, only the product categories you set to index will be added to your sitemap and Google will index them on SERPs.

    For the other categories, if you don’t want to index them, you can simply keep them noindex from Rank Math Meta Box Advanced Tab.
    https://rankmath.com/kb/advanced-tab/

    Hope that helps and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.

    Thank you.

    musacco

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Good morning,

    and thank you very much.

    I wanted to know, always in relation to the sitemap setting, going up

    Rank Math –> Sitemap Settings –> Pages/Products –> Include in HTML Sitemap

    should I keep it active in the same way as the XML one?

    For the moment, based on your advice on this Ticket, I have decided to Index only “Pages and Products”.

    Thanks for your support.

    Greetings.

    Anthony

    Reinelle

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Hello,

    Yes, you can sync the HTML sitemap to your XML sitemap as well.

    As per Google’s guidelines, crawlers can understand and organize your website faster and more easily with an HTML sitemap. When the crawlers know how to organize your site, it can increase your search engine visibility.

    Here’s a link for more information:
    https://rankmath.com/kb/html-sitemap/

    Hope that helps.

    Thank you.

    musacco

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Good morning,

    as always, thank you very much for your precious support.

    There is another issue that is not clear to me:

    In Math Ranking —> Site Map Configuration —> Attachments

    https://imgur.com/6jVuBnS

    What do you recommend? What are the best practices for Woocommerce?

    A thousand thanks.

    Best Regards

    Anthony

    Nigel

    2 years, 10 months ago

    Rank Math business

    Hello,

    For attachments, you can activate “Include in Sitemap” and leave “Include in HTML Sitemap” deactivated.

    “Include in sitemap” will help get your images indexed faster, while “Include in HTML Sitemap” is not useful for most websites as visitors normally do not look for images in an HTML sitemap.

    Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have questions.

    musacco

    2 years, 9 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hi,

    thanks for the reply.

    In Rank Math –> Sitemap Setup –> Attachments it tells me that:

    To configure meta tags for media attachment pages, you need to disable parental redirect attachments first.

    https://imgur.com/a/R5C8MNZ

    Following the link takes me to: Rank Math –> General Settings –> Links

    Where do I disable from? Should I disable from “Redirect attachments”?

    https://imgur.com/a/S8rLnLQ

    Thank you for your support.

    Best regards

    Anthony

    Reinelle

    2 years, 9 months ago

    Hello,

    Yes, that is correct.

    You may need to disable the Redirect Attachments option in Rank Math > General Settings > Links to optimize your attachments.

    Looking forward to helping you.

    Thank you.

    RankBot

    2 years, 8 months ago

    Hello,

    Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.

    If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.

    Thank you.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 17 total)
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The ticket ‘Sitemap: What is worth inserting and what is not?’ is closed to new replies.