Building a Movie Website From Scratch (GSC & Sitemap Update)
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Join me as I dive into the inner workings of AuteurGraph, my visual cinema history site!
I’ll discuss the unique challenges of handling massive sitemaps, sending 133,000+ URLs to Google, and pulling in extensive data to create the film industry by country and film movements pages.
I also share some insights into how I’m growing traffic by connecting it to Filmmaking Lifestyle and my plans for potential monetization down the line. Whether you're into indie projects, SEO, or film history, this one's for you!
#SEO #WebDesign #SEOTips #ContentMarketing
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction and Overview of Country's Page
0:21 Driving Traffic to Autograph
0:41 SEO Strategy and Google Search Console Insights
1:14 Managing Massive Sitemaps
1:52 Current Progress and Page Discoverability
2:29 Monetization and Future Plans
3:12 Film Movements Page Overview
4:00 Closing Remarks and Feedback Request
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▬▬▬▬ Video Transcript ▬▬▬▬
Hey guys, Matt here. This is another behind-the-scenes look at AuteurGraph, my visual cinema history site. I’ve been building this out, and it’s been a huge project, kind of a labor of love. I've pulled in a ton of data here, partly from various APIs and partly created myself. The goal is to showcase film industry data by country—it’s a lot of work, but it’s coming together nicely.
So, let’s talk traffic. I already have a large site called Filmmaking Lifestyle, which is fully monetized and brings in a lot of visitors. Since AuteurGraph is on-brand and shares a similar audience, I’m sending some of that traffic over to AuteurGraph. This has been a helpful way to grow viewership, especially when I link relevant pages like the Stanley Kubrick film timeline. It’s a great way to provide more value within articles and keep the audience engaged.
From an SEO perspective, I think some of you might find this part interesting. If you haven’t set up Google Search Console for your site, I highly recommend doing that as soon as possible. But, to be honest, I might have gone a bit overboard here. In just a few days since adding the sitemaps for AuteurGraph, I’ve dumped an insane amount of URLs into Google.
To put it in perspective, most sites have a sitemap of maybe a few dozen or a few hundred pages. The largest sites I’ve managed have had around 5,000 or 6,000 pages. But with AuteurGraph, I’ve tried to programmatically include every URL within individual sitemap files, resulting in 50,000 URLs per sitemap. So, each sitemap holds 50,000 pages, covering movies, people, directors, and more. It’s pretty nuts!
As you can see, Google has already discovered around 133,000 pages, and more are being picked up gradually. Some URLs are listed as “couldn’t fetch,” so I’ve probably overwhelmed Google a bit here. If you’re setting up sitemaps, I don’t recommend throwing in this many URLs all at once like I did—it’s better to go slow and steady. But I’m confident that over time, Google will index more of these pages, and we’ll start seeing impressions and clicks.
For monetization, I’m not focusing on that right now. This is really a passion project that I’m just enjoying building out. Down the line, I’ll probably add ads, affiliate links, or even explore a membership option similar to Letterboxd. There’s a lot of potential, but for now, I’m just having fun with it.
There’s so much to the site, but let me quickly show you another key feature—the Film Movements page. This one’s still a work in progress, but I think it’s going to be very interesting to film fans. We’ve got a map of film movements throughout history.