Most recent blog post isn't being indexed?

[howlusa]

Yes but normally it only takes an hour or so. And I can't even find it with the URL which is strange for sure

[CleverPhD]

Hello there!

I see that based on the date listed on the page you posted this yesterday on 7/24/2013.  Depending on how often Google visits your site, it may not spider all your pages every day.  It has just been 24 hours so you may need to give it more time.

Things that can help speed this up is to make sure that you have this page listed in your sitemap

http://www.howlatthemoon.com/sitemap.xml

I did not see the page listed there and that is a common place that Google looks for new additions etc.

Good luck

[brad.s.knutson]

The sitemap for your site doesn't reflect your latest post.  The WordPress plugin you use to generate the sitemap can be manually rebuilt so you don't have to wait for it to do it automatically.  Now that I'm looking at it - it doesn't appear to have been updated in quite some time...

Go into Settings > XML-Sitemap then click "rebuild the sitemap" in the middle of the first section.  Check your sitemap again to make sure that it's been updated.

[howlusa]

Thanks for the response. I'm confused with the sitemap stuff. My root domain has Joomla installed on it and the person managing it before I started working here did the sitemap.. I'm not sure what they did.

My blog, /dueling_piano_bar, is run off of Wordpress. I'm using Yoast SEO and I see it has sitemap options in there. I checked the box to enable XML sitemap functionality because I didn't notice I already had the sitemap in the settings until just now. Also, the XML-Sitemap in the settings has "Rebuild sitemap if you change the content of your blog" checked so I don't know why it wouldn't be up to date unless this SEO plugin is interfering?

I thought I just needed one sitemap for the whole site, located at www.howlatthemoon.com/sitemap.xml . Is that incorrect? And how can I keep this updated. We have Joomla 1.5 (which I hate but we don't have the budget and I don't have the time to switch it over to another CMS) so I don't think there's a way to just rebuild the sitemap with Joomla.

Sorry if this is confusing, I'm confusing myself trying to write it out. I really appreciate your help.

[Johnny4B]

Ping it ...

Will help it get indexed quicker.

I would suggest using your RSS feed to get the page indexed by listing the address but you don't have an RSS feed.

You really should if you are taking blogging seriously and trying to engage with your customer database ..

Regards

John

[CleverPhD]

You can submit more than one sitemap in GWT and also, Google will read an XML sitemap and an RSS feed.  I have Google reading an XML sitemap and it also found my RSS feeds.  I would say, whatever feed you can control XML or RSS  get that to your liking and add in GWT for Google to chew on.

[howlusa]

I do have an RSS feed, it just hasn't been displayed. I just added it to my sidebar

[howlusa]

http://www.howlatthemoon.com/dueling_piano_bar/sitemap.xml

It says it was updated last night?

[CleverPhD]

I see the entry for the page in the XML now.  I also just searched the URL in Google and see it there as well.  Looks like this was just a timing issue.

[howlusa]

Thanks! Sorry I freaked out, the other day I noindexed archives and some other things and I was worried my settings screwed things up. Phew!