Sitemap Question

[WebServiceConsulting.com]

Hello,

I have a website and my sitemap (generated by the Yoast plugin) is set up into three different sections. One thing I noticed was that my homepage isn't in my sitemap.

Is this an issue? The homepage is indexed, but does it need to be added to the sitemap in order for it to be crawled?

How would I go about adding the homepage to the sitemap?

[David-Kley]

Look in your site map file, and copy and paste one of the other url snippets. Change out the url for the url of your homepage. Make sure to double check the urls that were included, for any unusual urls. With cms-based sites, site map plug-ins can include non-sef urls, that you don't want indexed.

I usually make my sitemaps manually. You should include plenty of info, including creation date, last modified date, etc. If you need a template or would like me to send you a sample site map with the correct structure, let me know.

And to answer your question, yes, I would include the home page url. While you are at it, make sure your site cannot be accessed with www and no www.it should always go to one or the other. Same goes with index.php for the homepage.

Hope this helps!

[DennisSeymour]

Hi Brandon,

No, it shouldn't be an issue at all. I have it like that for a lot of the sites I run so it's not a big deal

If you feel uncomfortable with it, switch over to a separate plugin and deactivate the yoast one. I know a lot of people that do so (usually because they are comfortable using /sitemap.xml LOL)  

[David-Kley]

I don't think it's a big deal not to have it, but for something that can be done in literally 10 seconds I'd play safe than sorry.

To explain what I meant about the duplicate home pages, you can often have multiple versions accessible to the public. For example:

Yourself.com

www.yourself.com

www.yourself.com/index.php

I haven't looked at how you have it set up, but all should go only to one version to prevent home page duplication, and the final version you decide on would be the one you include in the sitemap. Hope that helps!