Reference Guide

Marketing

Sitemaps and Sitemap Feeds

1. About Sitemaps

2. About XML Sitemaps

3. Working with Sitemaps

4. To Create a Standard Sitemap Protocol Feed

5. To Create an XML Sitemap

6. View XML Sitemaps

7. Download XML Sitemap

About Sitemaps

In Miva Merchant there are two kinds of sitemaps: HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps.

• An HTML sitemap is for your customers and gives them a bird's-eye view of your store. Customers can see the HTML sitemap for your store by clicking the Sitemap link. Note that you can customize your HTML sitemap. See:

  > User Interface > Pages tab > edit page SMAP



• An XML sitemap also has a kind of overview of your store pages, but it's designed to be indexed by search engines, like Google. When your XML sitemap is indexed by search engines, it increases the odds that customers will see links to your store pages when they run a search.



In this section we are only going to talk about XML sitemaps.

About XML Sitemap Feeds

You can manually create and update your XML sitemap, but it's a bit of a chore. For example:

1. Create your store for the first time.
2. Manually create an XML sitemap.
3. Modify your categories and products.
4. Manually update the XML sitemap.
5. Modify your categories and products . . . etc.

See To Run a Feed Manually.

To make life easier you can automate the process of updating your XML sitemap by using a feed.

Working with XML Sitemaps and XML Sitemap Feeds

1. Create the XML Sitemap Feed. See To Create a Standard Sitemap Protocol Feed.
2. Generate the XML sitemap. See To Create an XML Sitemap.
3. View the XML sitemap (optional). See To View Your XML Sitemap.

After you complete the steps above, your XML sitemap will be updated automatically.

To Create a Standard Sitemap Protocol Feed

"Standard Sitemap Protocol Feed" is a fancy way of saying: "XML Sitemap Feed". This is a special feed that you can create which will automatically update your XML sitemap.

1. Go to > Marketing > Feeds tab.
2. In the Feeds tab, click Add Feed .
3. Fill out the fields in the Add Feed dialog box. When you are done, click Add.

Code:	The code uniquely identifies the feed in your store database.
Name:	The Name is used for display purposes in the admin interface.
Feed Module:	Select Standard Sitemap Protocol Feed.
Suffix:	Generally, you will only need to use this field if you have multiple stores in the same domain. Your XML sitemap file will always be called "sitemap.xml". If you have two stores in the same domain, the second sitemap file that you create will over-write the first. For example: Create a sitemap.xml file for store1, domain 1. Create a sitemap.xml file for store2, domain 1. The second sitemap file over-writes the first because they both have the same name. To get around this issue you can add a suffix to your sitemap.xml file. For example: The xml sitemap filename would be: sitemapstore1.xml
Update robots.txt when sitemap is created	A robots.txt file lives on the web server machine and gives instructions to scripts or programs that visit your website. If you check this box: A robots.txt file is created if there isn't one already. Every time your sitemap file gets updated, the path to the file will be updated in the robots.txt file.
Notify Google of an updated sitemap	If you check this box, the Miva Merchant software will automatically contact Google and send them the location of your XML sitemap file, every time the file is updated.
Notify Bing of an updated sitemap	If you check this box, the Miva Merchant software will automatically contact Bing and send them the location of your XML sitemap file, every time the file is updated.
Products:	Use this field to select which of your products will be listed in the XML sitemap file. None: The XML sitemap file won't list any of your products. Active: The XML sitemap file will contain all products in your store, even if they are in Availability Groups. Available: The XML sitemap file will contain all products unless they are in an Availability Group.
Product URI Priority:	You can give the web pages that are listed in your XML sitemap file a priority; 0 is the lowest, 1 is the highest. Theoretically, if you gave your product pages high priority and your category pages low priority, your product pages could show up earlier in the result list from a search engine. However, search engines use several other factors to create the result list, so these priority numbers don't have that much effect.
Exclude Free Products	Free products in your store won't be included in the XML sitemap file.
Categories:	See Products field.
Category URI Priority:	See Product URI Priority.
Include pages in the sitemap	If you check this box, your xml sitemap feed will include any page where the sitemap_exclude item is not assigned. The purpose of this checkbox, and the sitemap_exclude item, is to give you the ability to have search engines index pages other than your category and product pages, if you feel those pages have content that should be indexed. For example, you could check this box if you feel your ABUS page should be indexed. (By default, page ABUS doesn't have the sitemap_exclude item assigned.)
Page URI Priority:	See Product URI Priority
Non-Canonical URI Priority:	See Product URI Priority.
Output Non-Canonical URIs/ Output Archived URIs	If you check these boxes your non-canonical URIs and your archived URIs will be included in the XML sitemap.
Last Modified:	The Last Modified field puts a "lastmod" tag in your XML sitemap. The lastmod date is theoretically the date that the product/category page was modified, but in reality, it will always be the date that the XML sitemap file was updated. The lastmod and changefreq tags are not used for much. They are essentially legacy fields in the XML sitemap. None: Don't add a lastmod tag to the XML sitemap file. Date: Put only the date in the lastmod tag. Date & Time: Put the date and in the lastmod tag.
Change Frequency:	The Change Frequency field adds a changefreq tag to your XML sitemap file. Although it doesn't have much effect, the purpose is to give search engines some idea how often your web pages change. Theoretically, this could influence how often your store pages are re-indexed by a search engine. If you choose "Do Not Send", your XML sitemap file won't have a changefreq tag in it.

To Create an XML Sitemap

1. Create an XML sitemap feed. See To Create a Standard Sitemap Protocol Feed.
2. 2 In the > Marketing > Feeds tab, select an XML sitemap feed and click Process Now.



To View Your XML Sitemap

Method 1

1. Go to > Marketing > Feeds tab.
2. Edit an XML sitemap feed.
3. In the Edit Feed dialog box, click View Sitemap.

Method 2

1. Open a browser and navigate to the xml sitemap page.
• If your store domain is: mivatest.com
• If your xml sitemap file name is: sitemap.xml (standard sitemap filename with no Suffix)

You would navigate to: https://mivatest.com/sitemap.xml

To Download Your XML Sitemap

1. Go to > Marketing > Feeds tab.
2. Edit an XML sitemap feed.
3. In the Edit Feed dialog box, click View Sitemap.
4. The XML sitemap will open in a browser windows. Choose File > Save.