bengarves.com/work/sitemap-refactor
Sitemap Refactor
[SEO-23] Sitemap Refresh
From Ben Garves’s work at Udemy. Re-created from the original document, with people’s names, internal links and non-public numbers removed or generalized.
EpicSEO-23
- Company
- Udemy
- Created
- Status
- In Progress
- Priority
- P2 - Medium
- Project
- SEO Squad
- Requirement source
- Engineering
An epic to refresh Udemy’s out-of-date sitemaps so bots need far fewer requests to process them, new and updated pages are discovered and indexed faster, missing high-value pages are added, and the infrastructure is simpler to maintain and report on.
- Technical SEO
- Sitemaps
- Crawling
- Indexing
Description
Udemy’s sitemaps are out of date, missing content, and underutilizing new technologies. These changes will:
- Require 99% fewer HTTP requests for bots processing our sitemaps
- Offer 20x faster discovery of new/updated pages
- Simplify infrastructure for maintenance and debugging
- Allow for clear GSC reporting
- Make sure new courses are indexed within hours
- Allow any page update to be indexed 10-20x faster
- Add high-value pages not currently included
Glossary
GSC: Google Search Console, Google’s reporting tool for how a site is crawled and indexed.