Dealer Spike SEO Sitemap

Owned by Francisco Castro (Deactivated)
Last updated: Aug 31, 2023
5 min read

This SOP is a work in progress. If you notice anything that is out of date, could be more clear or could be more efficient please update the SOP or add a comment to start a conversation.

Purpose

Provide instructions on creating and submitting a sitemap based on URLs affected by a client’s SEO package.

Procedure

Inputs:

 

  • Navigate to the Sitemap Generator Template sheet from Ryan Kelner and copy the only tab there to the client sheet of the dealer you want to create an SEO sitemap for (Click on Existing spreadsheet).

     

  • When you copy a new tab to a client sheet the new tab goes all the way to the right of all existing tabs so make sure you move it near the Work Done Import and SEO Work Done tabs.

  • Make sure to also remove the “Copy of ”in the name of the tab.

  • For the sitemap generator to work we need two things:

    • Add the site URL to the A2 cell of the Sitemap Generator tab.

    • Add all URLs from the old SEO Work Done tab to the new Work Done import tab:

      • Select all the cells on the SEO Work Done tab by clicking on the top left blank space and copy it by Ctrl+C or right-clicking and selecting Copy.

         

      • Visit the URL Extractor page and paste the contents of the SEO Work Done tab in the Step 1 box.

      • Go right into step 3 skipping step 2 and click on the copy to clipboard button to get all links extracted from the SEO Work Done tab.

      • Paste these links at the bottom of the oldest link or row in the Work Done Import tab adding a little note like “SEO Work Done URLs:”

Once you’ve got all your links in the Work Done Import tab

  • Copy the B2 cell of the Sitemap Generator

  • Paste into a blank notepad file, it should look something like this:

  • Create a folder for each of your clients' sitemaps in your documents.

  • Save your file type as “All Files” and name your file “seo-sitemap.xml”

  • This should leave you with an XML file

Make sure that for this step you’re connected to a VPN.

Now that our sitemap is ready we can upload it to the client’s FTP folder.

  • Open your NppFTP plugin in Notepad++ and navigate to the client’s FTP folder

  • There should be a folder named content, here upload your new XML file by right-clicking it and selecting Upload other file here… option.

After uploading the new sitemap we also need to update the main sitemap index.

  • In the FTP folder, there should be a sitemap.xml file near the bottom of the list of files for that folder

  • Open that file, it should look something like any of these two options. Sometimes it may have multiple sitemaps or just 1 or none.

  • Copy and paste the following snippet of code replacing the [dealer domain] with the site URL for the dealer you’re working on and the last modification date with the format YYYY-MM-DD.

    <sitemap> <loc>[dealer domain]/content/seo-sitemap.xml</loc> <lastmod>2023-08-31</lastmod> </sitemap>

  • It should look like this:

  • Save your changes.

Outputs:

  • With this, we’ve uploaded and updated our SEO sitemap for a Dealer Spike client.

FAQs