Sitemaps Issues

Hi,

make sure to flush your permalinks after activating / include / exclude content from sitemaps settings.

Go to WP > Settings > Permalinks to flush them.

This should solve the Couldn’t fetch issue.

About the other errors, we can see in the source code of this one:

view-source:https://midlandsmaidens.com/page-sitemap1.xml

Some code are added by another plugin.

2 solutions:

– disable shortcode execution: https://www.seopress.org/support/hooks/enable-disable-execution-of-shortcodes-in-xml-image-sitemaps/
– disable image sitemaps (SEO, XML Sitemaps, General tab, uncheck Enable Image sitemaps)

This guide can also help you:

https://www.seopress.org/support/guides/xml-sitemap-blank-page/

I’ve just been tinkering with the SEOPress sitemap, and clicking onto the PAGE sitemap (from the sitemap index) gave me this result:

Critical Error

So whats the crack here?

I’m trying to get away from Yoast and all I’m getting are excuses about shortcodes (that Yoast handles with no problems)?

Dunno, maybe Yoast is better than SEOPress after all…

Oh and by the way, all of the above ‘solutions’ were tried by myself this morning.

Just something from your last reply:

`About the other errors, we can see in the source code of this one:

view-source:https://midlandsmaidens.com/page-sitemap1.xml

Some code are added by another plugin.`

The URL actually sends you to page-sitemap.xml rather than page-sitemap1.xml, but I’ve not got a problem with that.

The sitemap you’ve chosen to view is a Yoast sitemap, listing all 46 of my website pages, all containing a date stamp of when it was last modified, (the date stamp was the next issue I was going to bring up with SEOPress).

Could you clarify which code or codes are added by another plugin and why it would affect the sitemap?

Hi,

The sitemap you’ve chosen to view is a Yoast sitemap, listing all 46 of my website pages, all containing a date stamp of when it was last modified, (the date stamp was the next issue I was going to bring up with SEOPress).

No this was our xml sitemap when we have checked the source code^^

But now, this is the Yoast one.

So we simply can’t debug it if we can’t see our sitemap enabled on your site.

Hi @rainbowgeek

As you can imagine, as soon as I saw the critical errors generated by the SEOPress sitemap, I went straight back to Yoast.

Hi @deeveearr

I understand.

If you can create a staging site to replicate the error, I would suggest to follow these 2 solutions mentioned in my previous post:

– disable shortcode execution: https://www.seopress.org/support/hooks/enable-disable-execution-of-shortcodes-in-xml-image-sitemaps/
– disable image sitemaps (SEO, XML Sitemaps, General tab, uncheck Enable Image sitemaps)

Thx

Hi @rainbowgeek

So I created a staging site, unchecked the Search Engine Visibility in the WordPress Reading page, and applied BOTH of the solutions mentioned above.

No critical errors this time, but exactly the same error messages inside Google Search Console, vis-a-vis:

THESE ERRORS

As you can see, ALL of the pages couldn’t be fetched, neither could the posts, staff or portfolio items, every one of which now had errors.

I reckon this system needs some work doing on it!

Search Engine Visibilty re-enabled so as not to mess up my main website.

This by the way, is a screenshot of what’s happening in my PAGE sitemap:

PAGE SITEMAP

…showing that the ‘last mod’ is not working throughout the website.

Hi @deeveearr

unfortunately, the errors reported by Google are incomplete.

We have to see the source code of the sitemaps to understand the issue.

You can send us by mail the domaine name of your staging site if you prefer (contact[at]seopress[dot]org).

Thank you for your help!

Hi @rainbowgeek

I just sent you an email, including the domain name of the staging site.

Hi,

We have checked your xml sitemaps on your staging site.

All sub-sitemaps are returning content, so no 404 error.

However, the lastmod tag in always empty.

Do you use a plugin to massively import your content?

Do you know if you use this filter:

‘seopress_sitemaps_index_lastmod’

Please let us know,

Thx

hi @rainbowgeek

Good point – I’m using a plugin and a code snippet to remove the Yoast timestamp.

I’ll delete and deactivate those, and let you know.

Right, I’ve deactivated and stopped the code running.

What’s the ‘index_lastmod’ thing about?

As it is, there are still 436 errors in total on the SEOPress site map.

We use the last modification date from each post provided by WordPress to fill the lastmod tag for our xml sitemaps.

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/build-sitemap?hl=en#xml

This tag is required by Google. The issue on your site is that it’s empty.

Probably because you have a code that filter this value in your theme or from a must-use plugin.

Hi @rainbowgeek

I would’ve replied earlier but I’m superstitious and don’t like the thirteenth reply.

I looked up your docs and found a code snippet for ‘last mod’ and added it this morning.

I placed it onto my main website and it’s been running for around 8 hours as we speak.

We’ll see how it goes, and you can mark the thread as resolved.

Thanks for the assistance!

Before you mark as resolved – it isn’t.

I’ve been watching these SEOPress sitemaps for the past 8 hours, going from successfully submitted, then the sub-sitemaps one by one getting errors even with the ‘last-mod’ snippet enabled.

Sorry, but I’m going to have to move back to Yoast, as I cannot trust how SEOPress handles the sitemaps.