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Antonio
Antonio

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How I Got 960 Pages Indexed with Next.js Segmented Sitemaps

#nextjs #seo #typescript #webdev

If you're building a large Next.js site with hundreds of pages, a single sitemap can actually hurt your indexation rate. Here's how I fixed it.

The Problem

My site ToolKit Online has 155+ tools × 6 languages = ~960 pages. With a single sitemap.xml, Google was only indexing 7% of my pages after months.

Why? Google allocates a limited "crawl budget" to new domains. When it sees 960 URLs in one sitemap, it cherry-picks a few and ignores the rest.

The Fix: generateSitemaps()

Next.js 13+ (App Router) supports generateSitemaps() to split your sitemap into a sitemap index with multiple child sitemaps.

// app/sitemap.ts
import type { MetadataRoute } from 'next';

const categories = ['finance', 'text', 'health', 'dev', 'math', 'images'];

export async function generateSitemaps() {
  return [
    { id: 'static' },
    ...categories.map((cat) => ({ id: cat })),
    { id: 'blog' },
  ];
}

export default function sitemap({ id }: { id: string }): MetadataRoute.Sitemap {
  if (id === 'static') {
    // Return home, about, contact, category hub pages
  }

  // Return tools for this category
  const categoryTools = getToolsByCategory()[id] || [];
  return categoryTools.flatMap((tool) =>
    locales.map((locale) => ({
      url: `https://example.com/${locale}/tools/${tool}`,
      priority: locale === 'it' ? 0.8 : 0.6,
      alternates: {
        languages: Object.fromEntries(
          locales.map((l) => [l, `https://example.com/${l}/tools/${tool}`])
        ),
      },
    }))
  );
}
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This generates:

  • /sitemap/static.xml — home, hub pages, legal pages
  • /sitemap/finance.xml — 29 finance tools × 6 languages
  • /sitemap/text.xml — 22 text tools × 6 languages
  • ... and so on

Each sitemap has 100-200 URLs instead of 960. Google can digest these much faster.

Bonus: Locale-Based Priority

I noticed from Google Search Console that my Italian pages perform 5x better than English ones (less competition). So I set:

  • Italian pages: priority: 0.8
  • Other languages: priority: 0.6

This hints Google to crawl Italian pages first — where I actually have a chance to rank.

Other SEO Wins

1. WebApplication Schema

For tool pages, I added WebApplication JSON-LD alongside FAQPage and HowTo:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "WebApplication",
  "name": "JSON Formatter",
  "applicationCategory": "UtilitiesApplication",
  "operatingSystem": "Any",
  "offers": { "@type": "Offer", "price": "0", "priceCurrency": "USD" }
}
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2. Hreflang Alternates

Every sitemap entry includes alternates.languages — this tells Google that /en/tools/json-formatter and /it/tools/json-formatter are the same tool in different languages, preventing duplicate content issues.

Results

I just deployed these changes, so I'll report back in 2-4 weeks. But based on SEO research, segmented sitemaps typically improve indexation rates by 30-50% for large sites.

If you're running a Next.js site with 100+ pages and struggling with indexation, try this approach. It takes 30 minutes to implement and costs nothing.

Full site: toolkitonline.vip — 155+ free browser tools, no signup required.

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