Has important is it to set "priority" and "frequency" in sitemaps?
-
Has anyone ever done any testing on setting "priority' and "frequency" in their sitemaps? What was the result? Does specifying priority or frequency help quite a bit?
-
This is basically a way for sites to try to control the performance hit of being crawled too often by the bots. I don't think its ever worked to get a site deemed unimportant by the engines crawled more often than they would otherwise. If your site is not getting slammed by bots (and if it is, you probably have bigger performance problems to go after first) then, like Ryan Kent said, there isn't much use for these.
-
Has important is it to set "priority" and "frequency" in sitemaps?
Google adheres to the protocol published on sitemaps.org. The details on those tags can be found here: http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php
In short, the settings are hints, not directives. Google MAY consider or disregard the information. I do not place any importance on this information. A properly developed site does not even require a sitemap submission at all. The primary reason I submit sitemaps is the software which creates the HTML sitemap also generates an XML sitemap and it is a one-time setup to automatically submit the sitemap to Google and Bing. Otherwise, I am not aware of any real benefit of submitting sitemaps for modern SEO.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
"Unnatural links to your site" manual action by Google
Hi, My site has been hit by a "Unnatural links to your site" manual action penalty and I've just received a decline on my 2nd reconsideration request, after disavowing even more links than I did in the first request. I went over all the links in WMT to my site with an SEO specialist and we both thought things have been resolved but apparently they weren't. I'd appreciate any help on this so as to lift the penalty and get my site back to its former rankings, it has ranked well before and the timing couldn't have been worse. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ishais
Yael0 -
Xml sitemap Issue... Xml sitemap generator facilitating only few pages for indexing
Help me I have a website earlier 10,000 WebPages were facilitated in xml sitemap for indexation, but from last few days xml sitemap generator facilitating only 3300 WebPages for indexing. Please help me to resolve the issue. I have checked Google webmaster indexed pages, its showing 8,141. I have tried 2-3 paid tools, but all are facilitating 3300 pages for indexing. I am not getting what is the exact problem, whether the server not allowing or the problem with xml sitemap generator. Please please help me…
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | udistm0 -
Rel=next/prev for paginated pages then no need for "no index, follow"?
I have a real estate website and use rel=next/prev for paginated real estate result pages. I understand "no index, follow" is not needed for the paginated pages. However, my case is a bit unique: this is real estate site where the listings also show on competitors sites. So, I thought, if I "no index, follow" the paginated pages that would reduce the amount of duplicate content on my site and ultimately support my site ranking well. Again, I understand "no index, follow" is not needed for paginated pages when using rel=next/prev, but since my content will probably be considered fairly duplicate, I question if I should do anyway.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Video Sitemap Creation Question
I have created a sitemap file as per Google Web Master Tools instructions. I have it saved as a .txt file. Am I right in thinking that this needs to be uploaded as a .xml file? If so, how do I convert this to a XML? I have tried but it seems to corrupt - there must be a simple way to do this?!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
Change of URLs: "little by little" VS "all at once"
Hi guys, We're planning to change our URLs structure for our product pages (to make them more SEO friendly) and it's obviously something very sensitive regarding the 301 redirections that we have to take with... I'm having a doubt about Mister Google: if we slowly do that modification (area by area, to minimize the risk of problems in case of bad 301 redirection), would we lose rankings in the search engine? (I'm wondering if they might consider our website is not "coherent" -> not the same product page URLs structure for all the product pages during some time) Thanks for your kind opinion 😉
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kuantokusta0 -
What our peoples list from from 1 to 10 the most important "on page" Factors
we are all at different stages in our SEO and all have different skills and experiences would like to see if people have the same list or similar with this question.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
Best strategy for "product blocks" linking to sister site? Penguin Penalty?
Here is the scenario -- we own several different tennis based websites and want to be able to maximize traffic between them. Ideally we would have them ALL in 1 site/domain but 2 of the 3 are a partnership which we own 50% of and why are they are off as a separate domain. Big question is how do we link the "products" from the 2 different websites without looking spammy? Here is the breakdown of sites: Site1: Tennis Retail website --> about 1200 tennis products Site2: Tennis team and league management site --> about 60k unique visitors/month Site3: Tennis coaching tip website --> about 10k unique visitors/month The interesting thing was right after we launched the retail store website (site1), google was cranking up and sending upwards of 25k search impressions/day within the first 45 days. Orders kept trickling in and doing well overall for first launching. Interesting thing was Google "impressions" peaked at about 60 days post launch and then started trickling down farther and farther and now at about 3k-5k impressions/day. Many keywords phrases were originally on page 1 (position 6-10) and now on page 3-8 instead. Next step was to start putting "product links" (3 products per page) on site2 and site3 -- about 10k pages in total with about 6 links per page off to the product page (1 per product and 1 per category). We actually divided up about 100 different products to be displayed so this would mean about 2k links per product depending on the page. FYI, those original 10k pages from site2 and site3 already rank very well in Google and have been indexed for the past 2+ years in there. Most popular word on the sites is Tennis so very related. Our rationale was "all the websites are tennis related" and figured that the links on the latest and greatest products would be good for our audience. Pre-Penguin, we also figured this strategy would also help us rank for these products as well for when users are searching on them. We are thinking through since traffic and gone down and down and down from the peak of 45 days ago, that Penguin doesn't like all these links -- so what to do now? How to fix it and make the Penguin happy? Here are a couple of my thoughts on fixing it: 1. Remove the "category link" in our "product grouping" which would cut down the link by 1/3rd. 2. Place a "nofollow" on all the links for the other "product links". This would allow us to get the "user clicks" from these while the user is on that page. 3. On our homepage (site2 & site3), place 3 core products that change frequently (weekly) and showcase the latest and greatest products/deals. Thought is to NOT use the "nofollow" on these links since it is the homepage and only about 5 links overall. Heck part of me debated on taking our top 1000 pages (from the 10k page) and put the links ONLY on those and distribute about 500 products on them so this would mean only 2 links per product -- it would mean though about 4k links going there. Still thinking #2 above could be better? Any other thoughts would be great! Thanks, Jeremy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jab10000 -
Can a XML sitemap index point to other sitemaps indexes?
We have a massive site that is having some issue being fully crawled due to some of our site architecture and linking. Is it possible to have a XML sitemap index point to other sitemap indexes rather than standalone XML sitemaps? Has anyone done this successfully? Based upon the description here: http://sitemaps.org/protocol.php#index it seems like it should be possible. Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CareerBliss0