cmaven

Worknotes

:bulb: SEO Series Part 3. Part 1 covered post-level SEO basics. Part 2 made the sitemap actually generate and refresh via a 3-line fix in _config.yml. Now that the sitemap is working, the next step is what goes into it — i.e., the quality of the sitemap itself. This post summarizes 5 issues found while auditing the whole repository and the bulk fixes applied.

:bulb: SEO Series Layout

  • Part 1 — Post-level SEO: frontmatter, jekyll-seo-tag, permalink and filename
  • Part 2 — Making sitemap refresh properly: _config.yml url/future/timezone — 3-line diagnosis and fix
  • Part 3 (this post) — Site-wide SEO audit: sitemap quality, verification meta tags, bulk description fix, 404/archive cleanup
  • Part 4 — Cleaning up Google Search Console residuals: diagnosing 404/redirect/”crawled-not-indexed” and applying noindex meta tags

Environment: Jekyll 3.x + minimal-mistakes + GitHub Pages + jekyll-sitemap plugin

[01] Why Audit

In Part 2, url, future, and timezone were set so the sitemap is generated/refreshed under the correct domain. Before registering with Google Search Console, however, it was worth inspecting the sitemap’s quality itself.

Opening sitemap.xml showed:



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Out of 119 URLs total:
  ├── Post URLs: 85 (71%)        ← valuable content
  ├── Category pages: 17 (14%)   ← just lists
  ├── Tag pages: 1
  ├── pagination: 3 (/page2/, /page3/)
  ├── Home page: 1
  └── Other: 12

From Google’s perspective this looks like “this sitemap is mostly unchanging low-value URLs with a few updates” — and it stops re-reading.

[02] Issues Found (5)

graph TD
    AUDIT["Repo-wide SEO audit"] --> P1["① Low-value URLs
mixed in sitemap"]
    AUDIT --> P2["② Verification meta tags
not set in _config.yml"]
    AUDIT --> P3["③ 9 posts missing
description"]
    AUDIT --> P4["④ No 404 page"]
    AUDIT --> P5["⑤ Build output (_site)
has localhost URLs"]

    P1 --> S1["Sitemap trust ↓
Google stops re-reading"]
    P2 --> S2["HTML meta tags
not rendered"]
    P3 --> S3["Search results show
generic snippet"]
    P4 --> S4["Bad URL hit shows
default 404 (UX hurt)"]
    P5 --> S5["Local build only
resolved at deploy"]

    style P1 fill:#ffcccc,stroke:#c62828
    style P2 fill:#ffcccc,stroke:#c62828
    style P3 fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#e65100
    style P4 fill:#f5f5f5,stroke:#616161
    style P5 fill:#f5f5f5,stroke:#616161
Severity Issue Impact
CRITICAL Sitemap includes category/tag/pagination URLs Entire sitemap quality drops, Google stops re-reading
CRITICAL google_site_verification, naver_site_verification empty Verification HTML files exist but meta tags not rendered
WARNING 9 posts missing description frontmatter Search results show site default (“작업노트”)
INFO No custom 404 page Bad URL hits show default page
INFO _site/ build output contains localhost URLs Auto-rebuilt on GitHub Pages deploy → no real impact

[03] Fix ① — Remove Low-Value URLs from Sitemap

3-1. Diagnosis

The jekyll-sitemap plugin includes every page in the sitemap by default. Category, tag, and pagination pages are listing pages, not content — there is no reason to submit them to Google.



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URLs that should NOT be in sitemap.xml:
  /categories/           ← category list
  /categories/linux      ← single category archive
  /categories/git        ← single category archive
  /tags/                 ← tag list
  /page2/, /page3/       ← pagination
  /                      ← home page

3-2. Fix

The jekyll-sitemap plugin excludes a page from the sitemap when its frontmatter has sitemap: false.

Files to modify (19):

File Purpose
_pages/categories-archive.md All-categories list
_pages/categories/*.md (16) Per-category archives
_pages/tag-archive.md Tag list
index.html Home page

Add one line to frontmatter:



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# Before
---
title: "Linux"
layout: archive
permalink: categories/linux
---

# After
---
title: "Linux"
layout: archive
permalink: categories/linux
sitemap: false              # ← add this single line
---

3-3. Result



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Before: 119 URLs in sitemap (85 posts + 34 low-value)
After: only post URLs in sitemap

[04] Fix ② — Set Verification Meta Tags

4-1. Diagnosis

Google Search Console and Naver Webmaster ownership verification files existed at the root, but _config.yml’s verification values were empty so the HTML meta tags were not rendered.



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# Problem state
google_site_verification :    # ← empty
naver_site_verification  :    # ← empty

Minimal Mistakes’ seo.html only emits the meta tag when these values exist:



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{% if site.google_site_verification %}
  <meta name="google-site-verification" content="{{ site.google_site_verification }}" />
{% endif %}

4-2. Fix

Extract the value from the verification filename and set it in _config.yml.



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# After
google_site_verification : "google6751f2559208d5b3"
naver_site_verification  : "naver62d9a931d0465dfc21a3946c3128be56"

With this, ownership is verified by both verification file and meta tag — more robust.

[05] Fix ③ — Backfill Missing description on Posts

5-1. Diagnosis

Out of 81 posts, 9 (11%) were missing the description frontmatter.



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Posts missing description:
  ├── claude-code-multi-agent-part1.md
  ├── claude-code-multi-agent-part2.md
  ├── claude-code-skill-hook-guide-part2.md
  ├── pip-error-no-module.md
  ├── pip-Ignoring-invaild-distribution.md
  ├── selenium-click-error.md
  ├── selenium-chromversion-error.md
  ├── django-simple-password.md
  └── not-null-constraint-failed.md

Without description, the SEO template falls back to excerpt → site.description (“작업노트”), so Google search results show a generic snippet unrelated to the content.

5-2. Fix

Add a 50~160 character description and excerpt based on each post’s content.

Before:



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title: "Resolving pip 'No module named pip' error"
date: 2022-02-16
categories: Python
tags: [pip, error]

After:



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title: "Resolving pip 'No module named pip' error"
description: "When 'No module named pip' shows up while running pip ..."
excerpt: "Reinstalling pip with get-pip.py when it breaks"
date: 2022-02-16
categories: Python
tags: [pip, error]

[06] Fix ④ — Create a 404 Page

6-1. Problem

Without a custom 404 page, the GitHub Pages default 404 shows up and users are much more likely to leave the site.

6-2. Fix

Create 404.md at the root:



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---
title: "Page Not Found"
layout: single
permalink: /404.html
author_profile: true
sitemap: false
---

The requested page does not exist or has moved.

- [Back to Home](/)
- [Browse Categories](/categories/)
- [Browse Tags](/tags/)

:bulb: Set sitemap: false so the 404 page itself is excluded from the sitemap.

[07] Extra — Archive C/C++ Posts

While auditing, 20 C/C++ posts from 2018 were sitting in the sitemap, reinforcing the “mostly unchanging site” impression. They were moved to _archive/ to exclude from the build.



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_posts/program_language/c/    (8 files)  → _archive/program_language/c/
_posts/program_language/c++/  (12 files) → _archive/program_language/c++/
Item Treatment
Post files Moved to _archive/ (preserved, excluded from build)
Sidebar C, C++ entries removed
Category pages _pages/categories/c.md, c++.md deleted
sitemap Outside _posts so auto-excluded
Restore path Move back from _archive/ to _posts/ to restore instantly

[08] Total Change Summary

graph LR
    subgraph Before["Before"]
        B1["sitemap: 119 URLs
(incl. 34 low-value)"]
        B2["Verification meta: not rendered"]
        B3["Missing description: 9"]
        B4["404: default page"]
        B5["20 C/C++: in sitemap"]
    end

    subgraph After["After"]
        A1["sitemap: posts only
(high-quality URLs)"]
        A2["Verification meta: rendered"]
        A3["description: 100% coverage"]
        A4["404: custom page"]
        A5["C/C++: _archive
(excluded from build)"]
    end

    B1 -->|sitemap: false| A1
    B2 -->|_config.yml set| A2
    B3 -->|frontmatter added| A3
    B4 -->|404.md created| A4
    B5 -->|moved to _archive/| A5

    style Before fill:#ffcccc,stroke:#c62828
    style After fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#2e7d32
# Task Files
① sitemap: false for category/tag/home 19
② Set verification meta tags 1 (_config.yml)
③ Backfill missing descriptions 9
④ Create 404 page 1
⑤ Move C/C++ to archive 22 (20 posts + 2 categories)
  Total 52 files

[09] Google Search Console Registration Checklist

After applying all the above, this is the final pre-registration checklist.

Check How Expected
sitemap URL Open https://cmaven.github.io/sitemap.xml Only post URLs, no localhost
canonical URL Post page source → <link rel="canonical"> https://cmaven.github.io/...
Verification meta tags Page source → search google-site-verification Meta tag present
robots.txt https://cmaven.github.io/robots.txt Contains Sitemap: https://cmaven.github.io/sitemap.xml
404 page Hit a non-existent URL Custom 404 shown
Open Graph Post source → search og:title, og:description Unique values per post

:bulb: Applying Part 1 (post-level SEO) → Part 2 (_config.yml for sitemap refresh) → this post (sitemap quality) dramatically raises the chance Google trusts the sitemap and re-reads it regularly.

[10] Next in the Series

Once you submit/resubmit the sitemap to Search Console with everything above applied, the coverage report will start accumulating results over the next few days/weeks. At that point you can see “the residual issues Google sees on this site”:

  • Not found (404) — old posts removed but still in Google’s index
  • Page with redirect — internal links written without trailing slash, hit GitHub Pages 301 responses
  • Crawled - currently not indexed — low-value pages like category/tag/pagination where Google saw the content but did not index

Part 4 interprets these 4 categories and finishes the cleanup with automatic noindex meta tag emission and navigation trailing-slash cleanup.

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