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What tools can I use in Webflow to create better sitemaps, including video sitemaps and excluding specific pages? Is Screaming Frog recommended?

TL;DR
  • Use Webflow’s SEO settings to auto-generate a sitemap and exclude pages by unchecking “Index this page”.
  • Generate video sitemaps externally using tools like Screaming Frog, extract video data, host the sitemap separately, and reference it in robots.txt.

To create better sitemaps in Webflow, including video sitemaps and excluding specific pages, you’ll need to work around Webflow’s native limitations by using external tools and careful settings.

1. Use Webflow’s Built-in Sitemap Options

  • Webflow automatically generates a sitemap.xml when a site is published.
  • Go to Project Settings > SEO to enable or disable the sitemap.
  • You can mark individual pages to be excluded from the sitemap by unchecking “Index this page” in the page settings (under SEO tab).
  • Webflow does not support video sitemaps natively, so these must be handled externally.

2. Generate Custom Video Sitemaps Externally

  • Use external sitemap generators to create video sitemaps. Tools include:
  • Google Search Console Validator (for testing schemas)
  • SEMrush or Ahrefs (for sitemap analysis, not generation)
  • Screaming Frog (see next section)
  • XML-Sitemaps.com (for manual custom sitemap creation)
  • Ensure video content uses Schema.org video markup (e.g., JSON-LD or microdata).
  • Once you build your video sitemap, host it externally and reference it in robots.txt using:
    Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/video-sitemap.xml
  • Screaming Frog SEO Spider is highly effective for:
  • Crawling your Webflow site
  • Identifying which pages are indexed
  • Finding video embeds and extracting metadata (YouTube, Vimeo, self-hosted)
  • Exporting data for custom sitemap or video sitemap creation
  • It also lets you manually build or verify video sitemaps, which you can then upload and register with Google Search Console.

4. How to Exclude Pages from Sitemap

  • In Webflow:
  • Go to the Page Settings for that page.
  • Under the SEO tab, uncheck “Index this page”.
  • This prevents it from being included in the Webflow-generated sitemap.
  • Using Custom Sitemap (Manual Override):
  • If using a manually hosted sitemap, only include the URLs you intend to index.
  • Submit this custom sitemap via Google Search Console.

5. Hosting a Custom Sitemap

  • Since Webflow doesn’t allow editing the default sitemap.xml, you have two options:
  • Host your custom sitemap (e.g., sitemap-custom.xml or video-sitemap.xml) via a third-party file host or a separate CDN location.
  • Reference these in your robots.txt, which is editable in Webflow under Project Settings > SEO.

Summary

Webflow offers basic sitemap generation but lacks support for video sitemaps and advanced exclusions. To enhance control, use tools like Screaming Frog to generate custom or video sitemaps, exclude selected pages via Webflow’s SEO settings, and reference any external sitemaps in your robots.txt. Screaming Frog is highly recommended for this workflow.

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