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1. whiteweazel21
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #
   

   Hello, I am fairly new to SEO and have noticed issue with "WordPress SEO" in relation to the sitemap, specifically with images.

   I've noticed in Webmaster tools, that of the 39 images found by the plugin, only 1 is listed as being indexed.

   Previously, I used a image xml sitemap generator, in conjunction with this plugin's xml feature, to get the images indexed. I noticed that this second image sitemap destroyed the neat hierarchical search results as when using the xml feature from this plugin alone.

   So my options would be to either add the previous image xml sitemap and destroy the hierarchical search results, and live with that. Or, does anyone suggest that I open up the Yoast sitemap file, and edit in the correct images I want to displayed for indexing?

   I think part of the problem is that I use the "Multiple Post Thumbnails" plugin for my website. The featured image does not actually display on the pages with images. I have the featured image set to show as thumbnails in an archive, and a second "Featured Image", named differently, to output images to that page.

   So what do the gurus recommend? Is it difficult, worth it to edit the sitemap xml by hand? I suppose I would disable the feature, edit it, reupload. Then when I create new pages, I would need to save the xml sitemap somewhere, turn on the xml sitemap feature to get an updated sitemap. Then copy-past, and modify it once more. Is it worth it? I have never edited an xml sitemap by hand, and it seems tedious to do for each time a new page is made...

   Any other thoughts?
   Thanks!

   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/

2. whiteweazel21
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #
   

   Anybody have an idea?

   Currently I am just using this plugin for sitemap, and will wait the 1-2 weeks for google to display the website search with hierarchical format.

   Is there any way to add to the existing xml file, or add a supplementary image xml sitemap by hand meanwhile keeping the hierarchical format? If I made the xml image sitemap using the same xsl format, would that work?

   What other options do I have, and how important is it to index images? Does google and other search engines automatically index images even if they are in the sitemap?

   Thanks.

3. Joost de Valk
   Member
   Plugin Author
   Posted 11 months ago #
   

   First of all: there is no static file you can edit, simply because the XML sitemap isn't static.

   What I need to know is the following:

   - a link to an example post with images
   - the sitemap that post appears in

   and most importantly:

   - what you think is wrong with the sitemap and the images appearing in it.

4. whiteweazel21
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #
   

   Hi Joost, thank you so much for writing back!

   1. Links to pages where image indexation is a concern:
   http://www.bookboxshop.com/products/

   If you look at the sitemap for this page:
   http://www.bookboxshop.com/product-sitemap.xml

   Under the url "http://www.bookboxshop.com/products/" I have 30 thumbnails displayed, but 0 of them are registered as images.

   1.b http://www.bookboxshop.com/product/chat-noir/
   The detail page for one of the 30 thumbnails. Looking at the sitemap, it does show that one image is registered in the sitemap index. However, it is using the "feature image" that I am using to output the thumbnails, and the "feature image" does not show exactly show on that page. I think this occurs because of the "Multiple Post Thumbnails" plugin I am using, that allows me to use two separate featured images.

   For instance, looking at the sitemap entry in the xml for chat noir:
   

   <url>
   		<loc>http://www.bookboxshop.com/product/chat-noir/</loc>
   		<lastmod>2012-06-13T08:48:18+00:00</lastmod>
   		<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
   		<priority>0.6</priority>
   		<image:image>
   			<image:loc>http://www.bookboxshop.com/images/Chat-Noir-BK-58.png</image:loc>
   			<image:title>Chat Noir Book Box</image:title>
   			<image:caption>Chat Noir Book Box Thumbnail</image:caption>
   		</image:image>
   	</url>

   It is showing the image on the detail page as "http://www.bookboxshop.com/images/Chat-Noir-BK-58.png" whereas it should be "http://www.bookboxshop.com/images/Chat-Noir-Book-Box-Detail.png".

   Do you have a suggestion how to correct these issues, or any tips on how I could supplement the existing sitemap file? If I disable the "products" post type, could I then write a xml for these images by hand? And if so, how would I be able to keep the hierarchical format in search results?

   Thank you and sorry for the long read!

5. Joost de Valk
   Member
   Plugin Author
   Posted 11 months ago #
   

   The products page doesn't have those images, those individual posts have. So it's not weird it doesn't show up on the products page.

   As for which image shows; I don't think there's currently a way through a plugin to change that, but there is a filter on the images for each post: wpseo_sitemap_urlimages, this has two arguments, the first an array of the images, the second is the post ID. You should be able to filter that and change it.

6. whiteweazel21
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #
   

   But the products page does have 30 thumbnail images, shouldn't there be a way to show those?

   Regarding the filter "wpseo_sitemap_urlimages", where do I find this? Is there any information regarding using & applying filters?

   Thanks again

7. Alexander Gieg
   Member
   Posted 11 months ago #
   

   @whiteweazel21: Check http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API, then http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Filter_Reference, and then http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/api-docs/.

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