Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Mark Gilvey on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 08/27/2013).

Question about managing sitemap for subdomains

I have a static website with a WordPress blog attached to it in the same hosting account. In WordPress, I have a plugin that makes an automatic XML sitemap but I think it only maps the blog. Therefore, I added one to the root of the static site as well using an XML sitemap generator. Should I get rid of one of them, is it safe, redundant or unnecessary to have both?
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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

  • Arseniy Bolotsko: You are correct. Plug-in on your blog only makes the sitemap for the blog. You can have two sitemaps. ;Yours static site sitemap should only include the static pages and not the blog. Also, link them up in GWT
  • Mark Gilvey: So would I edit the xml file for the static site to not include the pages that are withing the Blog but do include the link that goes TO the blog?
  • Arseniy Bolotsko: I would. Include the static site main menu in one map and all of your blog posts in the other. Otherwise it seems redundant. And having the bots crawl the same content time could effect server load and crawl time. Depending on the volume. ;
  • Mark Gilvey: Excellent and noted!
  • W.E. Jonk: You can have multiple Sitemaps. However the URL's in a Sitemap which is located in a subdirectory should only contain URL's from that subdirectory. For example your Sitemap for your blog (I assume you installed your blog in a subdirectory) should contain only URL's with the path to your blog.

    You can also host your Sitemaps on a different domain. However you need to validate these Sitemaps on the different host by pointing to them in your robots.txt. [1]

    Besides being a form of validation if you want to host the Sitemaps elsewhere, you can use robots.txt to inform search engines about the location of the Sitemaps. With this you don't have to manual submit them to different search engines. [2]

    [1] ;http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#location
    [2] ;http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#informing

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 08/27/2013).