wiki:qPloneGoogleSitemaps

Version 43 (modified by olha, 14 years ago) (diff)

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Plone Google Sitemaps (qPloneGoogleSitemaps)

Plone Google Sitemaps is a Plone product developed by Quintagroup that allows you to enable different kinds of Google Sitemaps on your Plone website. Such Sitemaps help Google to identify site URLs and the data under each site section. With Google Sitemaps enabled, search engines could track the URLs faster and more efficiently, optimizing their search by placing all the information on one page.

Why do you create Sitemaps for Google?

Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a Sitemap - is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process.

Sitemaps are particularly helpful if:

  • Your site has dynamic content.
  • Your site has pages that aren't easily discovered by Googlebot during the crawl process—for example, pages featuring rich AJAX or images.
  • Your site is new and has few links to it. (Googlebot crawls the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn't well linked, it may be hard for us to discover it.)
  • Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.

Google doesn't guarantee that it'll crawl or index all of your URLs. However, it uses the data in your Sitemap to learn about your site's structure, which will allow it to improve our crawler schedule and do a better job crawling your site in the future.

In addition to regular Sitemaps, you can also create Sitemaps designed to give Google information about specialized web content, including video, mobile, News, Code Search, and geographical information.

Introduction to Plone Google Sitemaps

Plone Google Sitemaps allows you to make your Plone site Google Sitemaps enabled. You can enable the following sitemap types on your website:

  • content sitemap - is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process.
  • mobile sitemap - is a specific type of Sitemap, that index all site URLs that serve content for mobile devices. After this sitemap is submitted into Google mobile index, you expand the coverage of the mobile web and speed up the discovery and addition of pages to Google mobile index.
  • news sitemap - is different from regular Sitemaps, it is specific to Google News only. The nature of news sites is that they change very often and need to be crawled and indexed much more frequently. News Sitemaps let Google know when new articles have been posted and are available for crawling and indexing. Especially recommended for new websites, with dynamic content, with few links to it or requires users to follow several links to reach your news content.

Different sitemap types index their content and are independent from each other.

How to install Plone Google Sitemaps

  1. Click on the link of the Site Setup in the top right corner of your Plone site
  2. choose the first item Add/Remove? Products in the Plone Configuration list
  3. select the product qPloneGoogleSitemaps in the left column of the products table, where you can view all the Plone products available for install
  4. press the install button below the table and make sure the product appeared in the right column of installed products

How to use Plone Google Sitemaps

  • sign into Google Sitemaps with your Google Account
  • Add your Plone site to your Google account, e.g. http://www.plone-site.com
  • Click the "Add a Sitemap" link beside the site
  • Choose sitemap type (e.g. "General Web Sitemap" for content sitemap)
  • Type the URL to your Sitemap location in the provided field. Make sure you include the entire URL, such as http://www.plone-site.com/google-sitemaps
  • Click "Add Web Sitemap". You will see the following list:
    • I've created a Sitemap in a supported format
    • I've uploaded my Sitemap to the highest-level directory to which I have access
    • My Sitemap URL is: http://www.plone-site.com/google-sitemaps
  • Indicate that you've done all of the actions mentioned
  • Go to google "My sites" click verify link
  • After that you will be informed about two methods of verification they offer: uploading an HTML file with a name they specify, or adding a META tag to your site's index file. Choose the first method as it is the most convenient and not so time-consuming as the second one
  • Copy the name of the verification file specified below - google999999999999999.html
  • Go to your Plone site setup
  • Click on the link of Google Sitemaps in the list “Add-on Product Configuration”
  • Select the tab “Verification”
  • Enter verification file name (similar to google999999999999999.html) in the field provided
  • Click on the button “Create verification file”
  • Go back to Google site verification page by clicking on the link placed in the “Verification” tab
  • Indicate that you:
    • created a file named google999999999999999.html
    • uploaded the file to http://www.plone-site.com/ and can view http://www.plone-site.com/google999999999999999.html in the browser of Google.
  • Click on the “Verify button”
  • Google will verify that the file exists in the specified location. If it does, it'll show a status of VERIFIED and provide a link to your site statistics. You can view your statistics at any time after your site is verified by clicking the site link on the My Sites page.

If Google can't access the file, it'll give you information about the error it encountered. Once this problem is resolved, try to verify your site again.

To view the lists of Sitemaps you've added for a site, click the number in the Sitemaps column beside the site. You can also click the site and then click the "Sitemaps" tab. The "Sitemaps" tab for that site opens. When you initially add a Sitemap, the status displays as Pending. Once Google processes your Sitemap (which may take several hours), this status will change to either OK or to an error. If you receive an error, click on it to view additional information.

Plone Google Sitemap configuration

“Overview” tab

Overview tab includes general information about Plone Google Sitemap product, and step-by-step explanation about how to get to work with it. A list of helpful recourses is also available here.

No image "overview.png" attached to qPloneGoogleSitemaps

“Verification” tab

Use this tab while going through verification that you're the site owner on your Google account. Here you will be able to create verification file:

  • copy the name of the verification file (e.g. google999999999999999.html) from Google Webmaster Tools
  • Enter verification file name in the field provided
  • Click on the button “Create verification file”
  • Go back to Google site verification page and complete verification process

No image "verification.png" attached to qPloneGoogleSitemaps

“Settings” tab

qPloneGoogleSitemaps enables different sitemaps to be generated on your web site. Here you will find some helpful information on how to create new sitemaps and manage them.

All available site sitemaps are listed here.

No image "settings.png" attached to qPloneGoogleSitemaps

You can:

  • Add New Sitemap - simple use appropriate button at the bottom of the page and you will be forwarded to the corresponding sitemap add form.
  • Delete sitemap - select the sitemap's type you want to remove and press Delete.
  • Ping desired sitemap: select sitemap type and push Ping button. By pressing "Ping" button you inform Google that it should reread your sitemap as you did some modification on the site. Google usually rereads your sitemap with it's own schedule but you have possibility to hint it about best time to do that. Below this button you have five workflow lists, which give you the opportunity to let Google know about the changes in your Plone site workflow.
  • You can edit a sitemap by clicking on the necessary sitemap title and you will be lead to this sitemap edit form.

Edit sitemap

After clicking on add new sitemap button or on editing the existing one, you will be taken to the sitemap edit form.

No image "edit.png" attached to qPloneGoogleSitemaps

On the edit form you can configure single sitemap and its pinging options:

  • Short Name - give/change sitemap id (short name)
  • Define the types - select meta types to be explored and to be displayed in a sitemap. (as a rule, Document is set as the default content type for the Plone Google Sitemap. However, it would be much better for the Google to see some other content types in your Plone Google Sitemap, like Folder or FormMailer).
  • Review status - select the state of the objects to be visible in the sitemap.
  • Blackout entries - objects with the given short names will be removed from the sitemap.
  • URL processing Regular Expression - master regular expression in Perl syntax.
  • Additional URLs - add URLs that are not objects to enable them to be shown even though their content type was not chosen in the field Define the types.
  • Pinging workflow transitions - select workflow transitions for pinging Google on.

Note

It is essential to avoid the situation when there are two objects with the same content in the Sitemap, e.g. a folder and its default page. Various methods can be applied in such cases. One can either forbid ids of these objects by entering them in the field “Blackout entries” or make sure the default pages are not published unlike folders.

Why do you create Sitemaps for Google?

More about News Sitemap

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