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I'm creating an invite only website, so my question is if I need to create a sitemap xml and upload to Google and others search engines with all pages? With only the main page (that'll be open for everyone)?

And what others SEO tips I could use in a scenario like this?

I'm new to SEO, sorry for the newbie questions.

Thanks!

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  • Your intention is somewhat unclear. Is it an invite only website as in private and no public access to it? Or do you mean something else by invite only? Either way you need a sitemap to tell search engines about your pages, if they cannot easily be found.
    – Abu Nooh
    May 27, 2015 at 15:23
  • Sitemaps are largely ignored except for comparison and should only be used for sites that are very very large, have a paywall, or have a login and only then if you want those pages indexed. They do not help with SEO at all. I explain it in the link above.
    – closetnoc
    May 27, 2015 at 15:37

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SEO is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. In Layman terms, it basically means trying to make your site appear as the first result in search engines based on keywords mostly related to your site.

Making a sitemap is like asking search engines to prepare themselves to index your pages until you submit the sitemap to any search engine, in which case the indexing starts.

I assume by "invite only" you mean that only selected individuals will know the URL to sections not available to the public. If you make a sitemap, then to maintain security, don't include these URLs in the sitemap.

Other than that, I'll have to go with a no for sitemap creation unless that introductory page on your site is so spectacular that millions of people will want to see it, in which case you'd only index that one page, but even then, search engines might have already indexed it.

If by chance search engines have indexed your private pages and you still want to make them accessible to selected individuals just by typing in the URL only, then you want to add the following between <head> and </head> section of the HTML code of each affected private page:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

That way, search engines will remove the affected pages off their index and eventually will no longer list them.

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