How to handle a blog subdomain on the main sitemap and robots file?
-
Hi,
I have some confusion about how our blog subdomain is handled in our sitemap. We have our main website, example.com, and our blog, blog.example.com.
-
Should we list the blog subdomain URL in our main sitemap? In other words, is listing a subdomain allowed in the root sitemap?
-
What does the final structure look like in terms of the sitemap and robots file? Specifically:
would I include a link to our blog subdomain (blog.example.com)?
would I include a link to BOTH our main sitemap and blog sitemap?
would I include a link to our main website URL (even though it's not a subdomain)?
does a subdomain need its own robots file?
I'm a technical SEO and understand the mechanics of much of on-page SEO.... but for some reason I never found an answer to this specific question and I am wondering how the pros do it. I appreciate your help with this.
-
-
It's my understanding that you treat each subdomain as a unique site. So each subdomain should have its own unique XML sitemap and robots.txt file, as well as submitted separately to Google Webmaster Tools. But to answer your inter-linking question, I would avoid including the other domain URLs in those files (XML and Robots). Only include the URLs for that particular domain and/or subdomain. With that being said however, I would inter-link them on the actual site somewhere. Maybe in the HTML sitemap, navigation, footer, or even naturally throughout your body content where appropriate as well.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Main menu duplication
I am working on a site that has just gone through a migration to Shopify at the very same time as Google did an update in October. So problems from day 1. All main menu categories have subsequently over the past 6 weeks fallen off a cliff. All aspects of the site have been reviewed in terms of technical, link profile and on-page, with the site in better shape than several ranking competitors. One issue that i'd like some feedback on is the main menu which has 4 iterations in the source. desktop desktop (sticky) mobile mobile (sticky - appears as a second desktop sticky but I assume for mobile) These items that are "duplicated" menus are the top level menu items only. The rest of the nested menu items are included within the last mobile menu option. So desktop menu in source doesn't include any of the sub-menu items, the mobile version carries all these there are 4 versions of the top level main menu items in source Should I be concerned? Considering we have significant issues should this be cleaned up?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Google News sitemap keywords
My company is a Theater news and reviews site. We're building a google news sitemap and Google suggests some recommended keywords we can use with their <keywords>tag: https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/116037</keywords> Our writers also tag their stories with relevant keywords. What should we populate the <keywords>tag with?</keywords> We were thinking we'd automatically populate it with author-added tags, in addition to one or more of the recommended ones suggested by Google, such as Theater, Arts, and Culture (all of our articles are related to these topics). Finally, many of our articles are about say, celebrities. An author may tag an article with 'Bryan Cranston,' and when this is the case we're considering also tagging it with the 'Celebrities' tag. Are all or any of these worthwhile?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Hreflang Sitemap
Hi all, Have you ever created an hreflang sitemap using in-house resources or a third-party company for a group of over 70 sites, each with hundreds of pages and all with localised URLs? If so, would you mind sharing how you did it, or the contact details of the company you used? In this specific case there is nothing in the URL or code that I can use to group the alternatives automatically. Thanks, Carlos
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carlos-R0 -
Follow or nofollow to subdomain
Hi, I run a hotel booking site and the booking engine is setup on a subdomain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vmotuz
The subdomain is disabled from being indexed in robots.txt Should the links from the main domain have a nofollow to the subdomain? What are you thoughts? Thanks!0 -
Meta NoIndex tag and Robots Disallow
Hi all, I hope you can spend some time to answer my first of a few questions 🙂 We are running a Magento site - layered/faceted navigation nightmare has created thousands of duplicate URLS! Anyway, during my process to tackle the issue, I disallowed in Robots.txt anything in the querystring that was not a p (allowed this for pagination). After checking some pages in Google, I did a site:www.mydomain.com/specificpage.html and a few duplicates came up along with the original with
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
"There is no information about this page because it is blocked by robots.txt" So I had added in Meta Noindex, follow on all these duplicates also but I guess it wasnt being read because of Robots.txt. So coming to my question. Did robots.txt block access to these pages? If so, were these already in the index and after disallowing it with robots, Googlebot could not read Meta No index? Does Meta Noindex Follow on pages actually help Googlebot decide to remove these pages from index? I thought Robots would stop and prevent indexation? But I've read this:
"Noindex is a funny thing, it actually doesn’t mean “You can’t index this”, it means “You can’t show this in search results”. Robots.txt disallow means “You can’t index this” but it doesn’t mean “You can’t show it in the search results”. I'm a bit confused about how to use these in both preventing duplicate content in the first place and then helping to address dupe content once it's already in the index. Thanks! B0 -
XML Sitemap for classifieds
I have seeon some trends for sites which do not even use XML sitemp and robots e.g. see this site. How do you see if sitemap is not used. Also for classified websites, should ad pages be included in sitemap because after certain duration those ads will be deleted and google might not be able to crawl. What do you suggest about XML sitemap for classified website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict0 -
How important are sitemap errors?
If there aren't any crawling / indexing issues with your site, how important do thing sitemap errors are? Do you work to always fix all errors? I know here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/bings-duane-forrester-on-webmaster-tools-metrics-and-sitemap-quality-thresholds Duane Forrester mentions that sites with many 302's 301's will be punished--does any one know Googe's take on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Is my Company Blog Causing issues?
We have a company blog. IE companydomain.com/blog/. Much of the content is unrelated to what we do. So why do we do it? Cover local topics that our customers may be interested in and searching for. Get them in the back door so to speak. Link bait, social sharing etc Develop a marketing culture that's engaged always learning. Customers get to know the people behind the company. Here's my Pickle If i sub domain or separate the site entirely, i won't benefit from all the juice we're generating. If i keep the status quo, since much of the content isn't directly related to my "category", logic tells me that i could be diluting my website in Googles prying eyes. Feedback PLEASE.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | schmeetz0