DS SEO Sitemaps

Owned by Gabriel Reyes
Last updated: Oct 17, 2023 by Valeria Villegas (Deactivated)

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 If you notice anything that is out of date, could be more clear or could be more efficient please update the SOP or add a comment to start a conversation.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

Learn how to create, upload, and update SEO sitemaps needed for Google to index pages worked on.

Procedure

Inputs:

To do this process you will need

  • An account for properly accessing clients' sheets

  • Access to SEO and/or SEM Google accounts

  • Access to a VPN

  • Notepad++ and access to clients' folders (If access isn’t possible please contact team lead and/or manager)

  • Template from the sitemap generator

SEO Sitemap Update sheet

Sitemap Generator Template

Creating the SEO Sitemap:

With a proper Google account look for client’s sheet on Google Drive and open it.

In this example Interstate Cycles will be used.

Open the Sitemap Generator Template and copy the whole sheet into the client’s sheet by clicking on the only tab available and copying into an existing sheet like shown. Don’t worry if you can’t edit it, just make sure you can view it.

A search box will popup. There, look for the client’s sheet, select it and copy the template.

Once copied, it should automatically fill with URLs found on the client’s sheet. Rename the tab to “Sitemap Generator” and drag it near the Work Done Import tab.

 

Copy the client’s website URL into cell 2A of the Sitemap Generator tab.

Note: open the client’s website to get the most updated URL.

IMPORTANT: Older clients have a tab called SEO Work Done where there’s information needed to fully index the pages worked on.

  1. Navigate to SEO Work Done tab and select and copy everything (you can use Ctrl+A to select everything then Ctrl+C to copy).

  2. Open URL Extractor and paste all the information from the SEO Work Done tab into the input box.

  3. Copy the URLs extracted in the Work Done Import tab at the very bottom where the dates end. URLs that are not from client’s website can be deleted but the generator will ignore them anyway.

After these 3 steps the Sitemap Generator should be ready to upload.

Uploading the SEO Sitemap:

Open the regular notepad and paste the code generated in the Sitemap Generator tab

It should look like the image above. Make sure all code lines are complete as sometimes they will be pasted incorrectly.

After checking the code is correct, save the document as seo-sitemap.xml

Make sure to select “All Files” as it is needed to save as an .XML document.

Make sure to name the document correctly, othewise next steps will fail.

Open Notepad++ go Live and look for client’s folder.

Don’t forget to connect to a VPN to be able to use Notepad++.

Right click content folder and select Upload other file here… option

A file explorer window will pop up, look for the file that was previously saved as seo-sitemap.xml and open it.

Open the file to check everything is good.

 

Updating the SEO Sitemap:

Now the SEO Sitemap has been created and uploaded, it’s ready to be updated monthly after the client’s rep has updated the client’s sheet with the monthly content on the Work Done Import tab.

 

Outputs:

  • A client sheet updated with the sitemap generator code and the sitemap uploaded to the client’s folder, set and ready to be updated following months.

FAQs