Multiple Sitemaps Vs One Sitemap and Why 500 URLs?

[Dom441]

I have a large website with rental listings in 14 markets, listings are added and taken off weekly if not daily. There are hundreds of listings in each market and all have their own landing page with a few pages associated. What is the best process here? I could run one sitemap and make each market's landing page .8 priority in the sitemap or make 14 sitemaps for each market and then have one sitemap for the general and static pages.

From there, what would be the better way to structure? Should I keep all the big main landing pages in the general static sitemap or have them be at the top of the market segmented sitemaps?

Also, I have over 5,000 urls, what is the best way to generate a sitemap over 500 urls? Is it necessary?

[Leonie-Kramer]

Hi, Dom, maybe you find something here: http://moz.com/community/q/does-anyone-know-of-any-tools-that-can-help-split-up-xml-sitemap-to-make-it-more-efficient-and-better-for-seo

Splitting a sitemap can be useful for you to keep sight over the indexed url's.  But it's quit normal to run a sitemap with 5000 url's. the maximum is 50.000 url's for 1 sitemap, so it's not necessary.

Grtz, Leonie