Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Do you suggest I use the Yoast or the Google XML sitemap for my blog?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Do you suggest I use the Yoast or the Google XML sitemap for my blog?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    7
    3102
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • DavidC.
      DavidC. last edited by

      I just shut off the All-In-One seo pack plugin for wordpress, and turned on the Yoast plugin. It's great!  So much helpful, seo boosting info!

      So, in watching a video on how to configure the plugin, it mentions that I should update the sitemap, using the Yoast sitemap

      I'm afraid to do this, because I'm pretty technologically behind... I see I have a Google XML Sitemaps (by Arne Brachhold) plugin turned on (and have had it for many years).

      Should I leave this one on?

      Or would you recommend going through the steps to use the Yoast plugin sitemap? If so, what are the benefits of the Yoast plugin, over the Google XML?

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • DonnaDuncan
        DonnaDuncan @Stramark last edited by

        Yes, but don't link to it from your home page. It's for search engines not visitors.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Stramark
          Stramark @T0BY last edited by

          please do create a HTML sitemap in order to facilitate google crawling all of your pages and helping your visitors finding specific pages.

          Wouter - Online Marketing Bureau Stramark.nl

          DonnaDuncan 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • T0BY
            T0BY last edited by

            Thanks!

            Toby

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Martijn_Scheijbeler
              Martijn_Scheijbeler @T0BY last edited by

              Wouldn't do it, it's an XML file.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • T0BY
                T0BY last edited by

                Do you think having a link to your sitemap from your homepage is any use for SEO? I am getting mixed messages.

                Toby

                Martijn_Scheijbeler Stramark 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                  Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                  Hi David,

                  It doesn't matter that much, but mostly from an efficiency perspective I would go for 1 plugin who handles all of it and probably even beter then having 2 plugins. There is no harm in removing the plugin you're currently using for generating sitemaps and switching over to Yoast.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  Browse Questions

                  Explore more categories

                  • Moz Tools

                    Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                  • SEO Tactics

                    Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                  • Community

                    Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                  • Digital Marketing

                    Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                  • Research & Trends

                    Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                  • Support

                    Connect on product support and feature requests.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • Fubra

                    Sitemaps: Best Practice

                    What should and what shouldn't go in the sitemap? In particular, pages like subscribe to our newsletter/ unsubscribe to our newsletter? Is there really any benefit in highlighting those pages to the SEs? Thanks for any advice/ anecdotes 🙂

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fubra
                    0
                  • McTaggart

                    Why do people put xml sitemaps in subfolders? Why not just the root? What's the best solution?

                    Just read this: "The location of a Sitemap file determines the set of URLs that can be included in that Sitemap. A Sitemap file located at http://example.com/catalog/sitemap.xml can include any URLs starting with http://example.com/catalog/ but can not include URLs starting with http://example.com/images/." here: http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#location Yet surely it's better to put the sitemaps at the root so you have:
                    (a) http://example.com/sitemap.xml 
                    http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml
                    http://example.com/sitemap-spongecakes.xml 
                    and so on... OR this kind of approach - 
                    (b) http://example/com/sitemap.xml
                    http://example.com/sitemap/chocolatecakes.xml and 
                    http://example.com/sitemap/spongecakes.xml I would tend towards (a) rather than (b) - which is the best option? Also, can I keep the structure the same for sitemaps that are subcategories of other sitemaps - for example - for a subcategory of http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml I might create http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes-cherryicing.xml - or should I add a sub folder to turn it into http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes/cherryicing.xml Look forward to reading your comments - Luke

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
                    0
                  • PeteC12

                    Using a US CDN (Cloudflare) for a UK Site. Should I use a UK Based CDN as it says my server is based in USA

                    Hi All, We are a UK Company with Uk customers only and use CloudFlare CND. Our Site is hosted by a UK company with servers here but from looking online and checking where my site is hosted etc etc , some sites are telling me the name of our UK Hosted company and other sites are telling me my site is hosted in San Fran (USA) , where I presume the Cloudflare is based. I know Cloudflare has a couple of servers in the UK it uses but given all my customers are UK based ,I don't want this is affect rankings etc , as I thought it was a ranking benefit to be hosted in the country you are based. Is there any issue with this and should I change or is google clever enough to know so i shouldn't worry. thanks Pet

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC12
                    0
                  • eugene_bgb

                    Hreflang in vs. sitemap?

                    Hi all, I decided to identify alternate language pages of my site via sitemap to save our development team some time.  I also like the idea of having leaner markup. However, my site has many alternate language and country page variations, so after creating a sitemap that includes mostly tier 1 and tier 2 level URLs, i now have a sitemap file that's 17mb.  I did a couple google searches to see is sitemap file size can ever be an issue and found a discussion or two that suggested keeping the size small and a really old article that recommended keeping it < 10mb. Does the sitemap file size matter?  GWT has verified the sitemap and appears to be indexing the URLs fine. Are there any particular benefits to specifying alternate versions of a URL in vs. sitemap? Thanks, -Eugene

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eugene_bgb
                    0
                  • seo.owl

                    How to handle a blog subdomain on the main sitemap and robots file?

                    Hi, I have some confusion about how our blog subdomain is handled in our sitemap.  We have our main website, example.com, and our blog, blog.example.com. Should we list the blog subdomain URL in our main sitemap?  In other words, is listing a subdomain allowed in the root sitemap? What does the final structure look like in terms of the sitemap and robots file?  Specifically: **example.com/sitemap.xml ** would I include a link to our blog subdomain (blog.example.com)? example.com/robots.xml would I include a link to BOTH our main sitemap and blog sitemap? blog.example.com/sitemap.xml would I include a link to our main website URL (even though it's not a subdomain)? blog.example.com/robots.xml does a subdomain need its own robots file? I'm a technical SEO and understand the mechanics of much of on-page SEO.... but for some reason I never found an answer to this specific question and I am wondering how the pros do it.  I appreciate your help with this.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo.owl
                    0
                  • 379seo

                    Canonical URLs and Sitemaps

                    We are using canonical link tags for product pages in a scenario where the URLs on the site contain category names, and the canonical URL points to a URL which does not contain the category names.  So, the product page on the site is like www.example.com/clothes/skirts/skater-skirt-12345, and also like www.example.com/sale/clearance/skater-skirt-12345 in another category.  And on both of these pages, the canonical link tag references a 3rd URL like www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345.  This 3rd URL, used in the canonical link tag is a valid page, and displays the same content as the other two versions, but there are no actual links to this generic version anywhere on the site (nor external). Questions: 1. Does the generic URL referenced in the canonical link also need to be included as on-page links somewhere in the crawled navigation of the site, or is it okay to be just a valid URL not linked anywhere except for the canonical tags? 2. In our sitemap, is it okay to reference the non-canonical URLs, or does the sitemap have to reference only the canonical URL?  In our case, the sitemap points to yet a 3rd variation of the URL, like www.example.com/product.jsp?productID=12345.  This page retrieves the same content as the others, and includes a canonical link tag back to www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345.  Is this a valid approach, or should we revise the sitemap to point to either the category-specific links or the canonical links?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 379seo
                    0
                  • BrooklynCruiser

                    When using ALT tags - are spaces, hyphens or underscores preferred by Google when using multiple words?

                    when plugging ALT tags into images, does Google prefer spaces, hyphens, or underscores?  I know with filenames, hyphens or underscores are preferred and spaces are replaced with %20. Thoughts? Thanks!

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrooklynCruiser
                    3
                  • iAnalyst.com

                    Create a new XML Sitemap for a blog subdomain?

                    What would be the best way to go about this? A site just put a blog on http://blog.domain.com/ Should there be a separate XML Sitemap for that particular subdomain or should the original XML Sitemap for the main domain be sufficient? Looking forward to your responses. Thanks

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.