How to manage XML sitemaps

Hello, you make a lot of questions,

I’m not here to explain you SEO but basically and to make it short, you have several old urls to change to a new url.

There are steps in the process:

– Google change url tool
– 301 regex to tell the new url

if well done, it will work well

@digico Paris i thought i had to write .htaccess rules but here’s my “dilemma”

My old links were more or less something like this:
/year/month/postname
ex:
/2012/01/postname
/2012/02/postname
/2012/03/postname
/2012/04/postname
…
i suppose i have to write one rule for each year but Should i also add one rule for each month or is there a way to write a general rule for that??

This would solve my 3rd question, and that would be a huge step!

hello alejandro,

to make it perfect, you will need a good regex,
the problem with regex is its adds up A LOT.

no you don’t need to make a rule for each year, in theory WordPress code is quite clever and create that. But not for change of root, i suggest you make a visit to Google Search Console and Google Change url tool, it’s basics.

As for semantics, tags, categories, wordpress almost invented them, so once you made that slight change for gooogle, all will be perfectly crawlable (and visited by Google) after a week / 10 days or so. Google search console will help you see what is in worldwide index – google search results.

OK, i’m using the google change url tool and that’s fine, now i would need to create the 301 redirects, could you point me to the right direction here? you mentioned i didn’t have to create a rule for each year, month, but i wouldn’t know how to proceed (i wouldn’t even know what to search)

—EDIT—
The google change URL tool allows me to change domains but that’s not my case, i still have the same domain (be-openminded.com), i just need to change the permalink of the posts.

By the way, i know wordpress automatically redirects the old permalinks to the new ones, but for some reason i get 404 errors whenever i click on a link with the old permalinks :/

Ok, i just solved problem number 3:

after searching a lot on the web, i found the a yoast tool that solved my case ( YOAST permalink helper ).

1 done, 2 to go!

Ola Alejandro,

You did well, a full redirect by GSC is good.

I’m digging old (this week) posts, can you repost the 2 other problems you have with XML please?

Hi there!

I manage to solve all three of the problems ??
Number 1 and 2 were related to the XML sitemap. As I said before I use yoast ‘s automatic sitemap and after a lot of digging and searching I understood what the sitemap was for, how to build one, what to include in it and how to send it to google.
I still have to wait a bit (for google to update) to see if I did everything right but I believe I did. my sitemap is smaller now and includes only posts (i removed the archives, tags and authors pages because they were resulting in duplicate contents).

Glad to hear it!

Xml feed can be customized, like by plugin but also ultra custom php functions. Like always with WordPress, it’s “menu” to choose.

On the downside, i suggest to make custom codes to generate sitemap, because yoast and others sitemap makers, don’t make a very logic one (in usual).

and what rules would you recommend to add to that sitemap?

I know how to create it, but i’m certainly not an expert on what to add and what NOt to add, to avoid duplicate pages and problems with google in general.

Thanks!

Hi Alejandro,

Not enough time to write a tutorial this week (though I’d like it to post on my blog), but I can give a very good advice:

Check your xml in Google Search Console of your site and check if duplicates, troubles, so on.

Also Xenu is a good tool to check and define where there are duplicates.
In many cases, dumb written plugins or else generates double canonical for many URLs. That’s just one my findings with a dozen managed clients ones.

Have a happy new year,