I’ve been building web sites and generating masses of free Google search engine traffic for over 10 years, in that time I’ve built the best WordPress SEO Theme available online and made tons of money, yet I’ve never generated or used a Google XML Sitemap. When I decided to write this part of the WordPress SEO tutorial since I’ve never used an XML sitemap and have generated tens of millions of search engine visits to my own sites I was entrenched in my SEO view Google XML sitemaps are not only not required, they are a hindrance to SEO analysis. After researching what others think about XML sitemaps I’m not so sure? Rand Fishkin for example advises using XML sitemaps: […]
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WordPress XML Sitemap
David:
I understand that Stallion adds a sitemap on a page within wordpress, but does it also create a sitemap.xml to submit to Google or do we need to add a plugin to do that? If so, what do you recommend?
Thanks for an awesome theme. I am really looking forward to 6.1… not to put any pressure on you of course;)
Google XML Sitemap SEO Value
There’s no built in Google sitemap.xml file with Stallion.
I haven’t added the option because it has little if any value in the real world and can make it harder to determine issues with spidering within a site.
All pages of a site should be spiderable by default, if Google can’t find a page through normal spidering you are doing something wrong that should be fixed. This problem can be masked by using an xml sitemap, the pages Google isn’t finding naturally can be found via the xml sitemap.
Google is not going to give a page decent rankings if it’s only found via an xml sitemap, so there’s nothing to gain SEO wise having pages indexed Google isn’t finding naturally.
That being said there’s plenty of free Google xml sitemap plugins in the WordPress plugin repository, never used one so no idea which is best.
Stallion 6.1 update is going extremely well, added another feature of a featured post slideshow for the home/archive pages with loads of different image effects (images fading in/out sort of stuff). Basically select up to 20 posts to add to the slideshow and it shows an image with a short excerpt of each post in a slideshow. Still planning to release this month, the slideshow was the last major feature I wanted to add for 6.1.
David
Google XML Sitemap SEO Value
WordPress SEO Test XML Sitemaps Google Traffic Generation
As mentioned in the main Google XML Sitemaps article I’ve submitted my first XML sitemap to Google for this site.
There are URLs on this site with content (not much) that have no backlinks (internal or otherwise), Google doesn’t know they exist (at least not from a link). The XML sitemap should be the only way for Google to find all the URLs.
I have my doubts, I can see Googlebot spidering the content via the sitemap on a regular basis, so might keep it indexed long term, but I highly doubt the content will rank for anything worthwhile.
Easiest way to run an SEO test is remove as many variables as possible, so I obviously can’t link to any of the Stallion SEO Super comments URLs that are too small to automatically generate a link. there’s going to be plenty of URLs to play with since comments that are below 400 characters lack the links,
“?cid=926” : Comment Title – “AdSense Cheating isn’t Illegal”
If you search Google for the title you’ll see the main article for the comment is on is ranking in Google (not because of the XML sitemap) at https://stallion-theme.co.uk/adsense-click-exchange-how-to-cheat-google-adsense/comment-page-2/#comment-926. That tells me it’s an easy long tail SERP and will be interesting to see what happens when the Google spiders and indexes the Super Comment URL.
Will the main article still be ranked for the above SERP, or will the Super Comment URL with no backlinks be ranked? We shall see.
Next we have a short comment I’ve just changed the comment title to, so we have a unique long tail SERP.
“?cid=915” : Comment Title – “Legit Ways to Make Money from AdSense”
If you do the exact search in Google (exact search means surround by “Speech Marks”) right now there are no exact matches. After Google indexed this comment and the comment I just changed the title on there will be at least 4 pages using the above text. The comment without a backlink will use the above text as the title tag, so if Google isn’t taking the links into account you would expect the URL with the exact match title tag to rank first.
That will do for now, will think up a few long tail SERP tests and add them to the comments here as well (new comments).
David Law
WordPress SEO Test XML Sitemaps Google Traffic Generation
WordPress Google XML Sitemaps SEO Test Results
Google has used the XML sitemap I generated with the Stallion Responsive SEO Super Comments URLs included and the “Legit Ways….” test has been indexed and ranked in Google.
This is early results (hours into the SEO test), so not a lot can be concluded beyond Google will use an XML sitemap to index pages that lack links (we already knew that) and it will in the short term rank them (that’s not surprising – it’s what happens long term that’s important).
I’m avoiding using the comment title here so this linked comment doesn’t compete for the SERP.
The test SERP is long tail and unlikely to generate much if any traffic, but it is higher than I’d expect, the URL has no backlinks so it’s not costing this site any link benefit to be indexed or ranked.
Looking forward to seeing the long term SEO test results.
David Law
WordPress Google XML Sitemaps SEO Test Results
Free Unlimited XML Sitemap Generator Test
This is an SEO test for the Free Unlimited XML Sitemap Generator Google search.
Apparently there are sites that can generate an XML site map just from a URL. Cool.
Basically you enter your URL in a form and the sites generate a Google XML sitemap.
The SEO test is to determine if this comment without a link can rank for the SERP Free Unlimited XML Sitemap Generator.
David Law
Free Unlimited XML Sitemap Generator Test
Google XML Sitemap SEO Test Result
I’ve given the SEO test over 6 weeks to run and the results aren’t very good.
Although pages on this site are found for the test SERP “Free Unlimited XML Sitemap Generator Test”, it’s not the unlinked comment that’s ranking, it’s the main post.
Only when you do an exact Google search (within “speech marks”) does the unlinked test comment rank number one in Google.
This exact search with speech marks: “Free Unlimited XML Sitemap Generator Test”
Right now (May 31st 2014) there are 60+ results, all of them from this site (no other website uses that exact phrase).
Now compare to the standard Google search without the speech marks. Google lists just under 10,000 pages found (remember no site other than this one uses the exact phrase) and the first listing from this site is the main Google XML Sitemaps article (which is linked multiple times), not the unlinked comment. The main article is listed in Google at around 13th, which isn’t a great result and will be based on the body text within the content (these comments use the phrase multiple times).
This tells us Google is spidering and indexing the unlinked page (that’s an interesting SEO test result), but Google doesn’t appear to rank it particularly well for a standard Google search, I checked the top 100 results and didn’t find the unlinked comment: so it’s indexed, but not ranked for that SERP even though the title tag is an exact match (should be the best match from this domain).
As it is right now I don’t see much SEO value in having Google spider/index unlinked content via an XML sitemap, but then I don’t see any SEO harm in it either (I have the modified XML sitemap plugin running, so won’t disable it now).
The unlinked pages are unique content that isn’t costing me any PR/link benefit for Google to spider/index and long term other websites might link to these unlinked pages passing link benefit to the rest of the site. You also gain the tiny amount of intrinsic PR built into a web page for ‘free’, so overall might be helping the entire site SEO wise a very small amount.
David Law
Google XML Sitemap SEO Test Result