Best practices for sitemap submitting

I've noticed that not all my pages that probably should be indexed aren't. I've been using BWP Google XML Sitemap plugin for wp, and just submitted the sitemapindex.xml to g webmaster tools.
I tried submitting one of the contained sitemaps "product_post" or something which rose from about 70% indexed to 100% after a day or two, although pretty sure it messed with my rankings during that period.

So what do you guys suggest? It's not that google can't see the pages, and submitting all the indexes seems redundant, but it appears to have had an effect.

Use Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin, it create an xml sitemap for you and it pings SE eveytime there a change to the sitemap.

Th3T3chGuy said:

Use Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin, it create an xml sitemap for you and it pings SE eveytime there a change to the sitemap.

Click to expand...

I know I probably should, it's just I've spent so much time getting my current setup to what I want, and it provides most of what yoast could give me.

I should add that BWP does ping search engines when there is a change, and google updates with increased submitted links, it's just they don't always get indexed like I'd expect.

ben10023 said:

I know I probably should, it's just I've spent so much time getting my current setup to what I want, and it provides most of what yoast could give me.

I should add that BWP does ping search engines when there is a change, and google updates with increased submitted links, it's just they don't always get indexed like I'd expect.

Click to expand...

Should consider Yoast. I have it installed on 3 of my sites and it has never failed me. All my pages and posts are indexed.

ben10023 said:

I've noticed that not all my pages that probably should be indexed aren't. I've been using BWP Google XML Sitemap plugin for wp, and just submitted the sitemapindex.xml to g webmaster tools.
I tried submitting one of the contained sitemaps "product_post" or something which rose from about 70% indexed to 100% after a day or two, although pretty sure it messed with my rankings during that period.

So what do you guys suggest? It's not that google can't see the pages, and submitting all the indexes seems redundant, but it appears to have had an effect.

Click to expand...

You shouldn't need to submit each sitemap, Google will find them from the index sitemap, you can see this be clicking the index sitemap in GWT and it will display the others. I accidentally submitted one of the inner sitemap indexes as well as the main index, it didnt seem to have any adverse effects and it was their for quite a while until i noticed.

Th3T3chGuy said:

Should consider Yoast. I have it installed on 3 of my sites and it has never failed me. All my pages and posts are indexed.

Click to expand...

I recently turned off the xml sitemap in Yoast, was causing serious issues on my site. I had stopped it making an index of a certain category, then for some reason the url for that category was still live, with an .xml suffix, but was a duplicate of my home page! Didn't realise utill it was flagged up in GWT!

I just make my own now.