Sitemap Health Check System¶

Status: Active (running regularly, 96.4% coverage) Project: SEO · Website

What this is¶

A recurring automated + manual audit of the WordPress XML sitemap against the firm's actual published content. It identifies missing pages, orphans (pages with no internal links pointing to them), and duplicate URL coverage. The system evolved from one-off audits into a formal Claude skill (sitemap-health-check) that runs in recurring passes.

Current coverage¶

96.4% sitemap coverage as of April 4, 2026
5 known missing pages at that time
13 known orphans
Leitchfield gap still open (flagged April 4)
Louisville noindex decision is pending — judgment call on whether to deindex the main Louisville page

The skill¶

The first rough audits revealed enough recurring errors, config issues, and permission tier problems that the skill was rewritten in April 2026 with: - Config restoration logic (the skill was re-reading stale configs) - Permission tiers (some audits need admin, some don't) - Better duplicate cleanup heuristics - Integration with RankMath's sitemap module (which owns the XML generation)

Recurring issues found¶

Orphan pages — valuable content with no links pointing in; fixed by the Sitewide Audit pass (also touched internal linking
color cleanup + font weight at the same time)
Duplicate URL coverage — RankMath indexing the same page twice via category/tag archives
Missing pages — pages created outside the usual deploy pipeline didn't get added to the sitemap
17 missing location pages in March — led to the first major batch fix (cross-linking all 18 location pages + Highlands orphan fix)

Process¶

Pull the live sitemap from RankMath
Pull the full list of published pages + posts via WP REST API
Diff
For missing pages, check whether they should be in the sitemap (some are intentionally excluded)
For orphans, find a natural linking home on another page and add the link
Resubmit the sitemap to Google Search Console after fixes