Fix sitemap 404 errors

[elzannewentzel]

Stakeholders: Nick (DG), Fabiana, ROIDNA What: Implement the XML Sitemap optimisations specified in the audit feedback. Why: Several sitemaps submitted to GSC return a 404 status, and among the valid sitemaps, there is a relatively low proportion of valid URLs.

Assets:

• Audit document

Requirements:

• Fix the 404 errors for the sitemap.xml and sitemap-pages.xml files
• Check what the empty sitemap file is for, and if not required, remove it
• We are waiting for access to GSC, and once we have that, we can use it to upload new sitemaps and index faster.
• The issue with the handbook will be covered in another task.

[bretthayes]

@elzannewentzel I think re-submitting a new sitemap.xml to the Google Search Console should fix the first 3 rows listed in that spreadsheet since row 2 and 3 probably won't ever exist again after we generate a new simpler sitemap.xml in #5711. This will also fix all the 404s and broken URLs that have been indexed in the past but no longer exist anymore on the about subdomain. Since we don't have a lot of URLs to index anymore on the about subdomain (now that the handbook is on another subdomain), one sitemap.xml generated from nextjs should do the trick.

[bretthayes]

I've submitted the newly generated sitemap.xml for About in GSC under the dot com property. I also submitted the handbook sitemap as well. So that should fix all 4 rows in the spreadsheet in the screenshot.