How can I get an XML sitemap in the order that I want?

[MichaelWeisbaum]

I use Screaming Frog and Xenu on a daily basis and I use them for sitemap creation, but the functionality is limited.  With huge sites, it's really easy to create an ordered list of URLs for the sitemap in excel or word and upload that to Screaming Frog to crawl.  The only problem is that it won't export the sitemap in the order that I uploaded it.  Does anybody know of a tool that will do this or am I doomed to sit an manually arrange the URLs the way I want?

[Marcus_Miller]

Pleasure, glad it helped!

[MichaelWeisbaum]

Thanks Marcus!  I've done some research on it and had some people say to keep the most important URLs at the top and least important at the bottom, but now I"m seeing alot more people say that order doesn't matter.  Which is great, cuz as you said, that would not be a fun Friday afternoon.

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Michael

I guess the obvious question here is why do you care about the order? I have never seen anything over on http://www.sitemaps.org that indicated that the order was of any importance and in fact, if you check the FAQ they have this statement.

Q: <a id="faq_url_position" name="faq_url_position"></a>Does position of a URL in a Sitemap influence its use?

No. The position of a URL in the Sitemap is not likely to impact how it is used or regarded by search engines.

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So, I would not stress, make sure everything else is right and forget about the order as that seems like a really horrid cut and paste job for a Friday afternoon.

Hope this helps

Marcus