XML Sitemaps settings for simple websites
-
We have numerous simple websites that are not updated very often (maybe once every 12-18 months). We are trying to create the perfect XML sitemap for them. Which brings me to my 2 questions:-
1. Should we include the "lastmod" tag in the XML sitemap?
2. What would you set the "changefreq" at? Once a month?
Remember these sites are never updated as they are simple sites for industry sectors such as building and property maintenance. Please justify your answer and explain why as we are trying to understand.
-
Great Answer! So for your larger sites - what structure do you use for your XML sitemaps? Focus on loc, priority and changefreq?
Also is there a risk if a lastmod date is left to be 12-18 months old the search engines may start penalising the site as they deem its out of date or am I assuming they will do this by analysing the cached copies and seeing there have been no changes? Does lastmod only really benefit sites that update frequently (even daily) and for sites with static content it should be left off?
I do have a further question about large ecommerce sites - is it best practice to have a one XML sitemap for the main pages and top level categories and then a separate XML sitemap for the products (I'm thinking for a site with 500 products.
-
Hi,
Unless the sites are very big - I don't see a reason for those type of sites to even have xml sitemaps. Now for sure those won't hurt - but they won't provide a positive ROI anyway.
I would first look in Web Master Tools to see what is the crawling rate - and if it's very low, then yes, it might help pushing some xml sitemaps to try and speed the process.
Also remember that lastmod and changefreq are just hints - Google might use them as some addon info but changes are small - for a site that doesn’t get updated that often - for google to take those into account.
Now let's assume you will add the xml sitemaps and you will add changefreq at one month - google might have a crawling cycle for this site - once a day for the main pages (home page and that's it or some additional 1-2 pages in the site that are "more important" and for the rest maybe google bot will visit them once a week, once a month or even once every few months - depending on how old is the site and the history of the site ...). Let's assume Google will take into account your changefreq settings - and it will visit more often as he might think you are up to something .. as in adding more content
... when the bot will see there is nothing there he will resume his old crawling cycle anyway.
Again, you can put changefreq once a day - it won't back fire in any way - is just that google bot will ignore that...
Hope it helps.
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
-
Allowing Guest Posts on Website
I am planning to allow Guest posts on my website blog where authors or writers can post articles to my blog. All content will be manually approved by me. But i would like to know if guest posts will cause any harm to my site or is it good way to generate content. Another thing as guest posts will be having do-follow links & author section too will be up. So firstly i would like to know whether its a good step or not? Would even like to know what checks should i do before approving a guest posts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Bing seriously hitting our website
Hi I have a strange query, Bing in the last four weeks have been seriously crawling our site, and while at the moment this isn't affecting our servers, coming into the busy time of the year I am just wondering if anyone else is seeing this. They are basically crawling the entire site (including nofollow pages) even though according to Bing Webmaster tools, they know our sitemap. Is anybody else seeing any unusual activity with the Bing bot. Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
4 websites with same content?
I have 4 websites (1 Main, 3 duplicate) with same content. Now I want to change the content for duplicate websites and main website will remain the same content. Is there any problem with my thinking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marknorman0 -
XML Sitemaps - how to create the perfect XML Sitemap
Hello, We have a site that is not updated very often - currently we have a script running to create/update the XML sitemap every time a page is added/edited or deleted. I have a few questions about best practices for creating XML sitemaps. 1. If the site is not updated for months on end - is it a bad idea to force the script to update i.e. changing the dates once a month? Will google noticed nothing has changed just the date i.e. all the content on the site is exactly the same. Will they start penalising you for updating an XML sitemap when there is nothing new about the website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK
2. Is it worth automating the XML file to link into Bing/Google to update via webmaster tools - as I say even if the site is never updated?
3. Is the use of "priorities" necessary?
4. The changefreq - does that mean Google/Bing expects to see a new file ever month?
5. The ordering of the pages - the script seems pretty random and put the pages in a random order - should we make it order the pages with the most important ones first? Should the home page always be first?
6. Below is a sample of how our XML sitemap appears - is there anything that we should change? i.e. all marked up properly? This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"><url><loc>http://www.domain.com</loc>
<lastmod>2013-11-06</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq></url>
<url><loc>http://www.domain.com/contact/</loc>
<lastmod>2013-11-06</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq></url>
<url><loc>http://www.domain.com/sitemap/</loc>
<lastmod>2013-11-06</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq></url></urlset> Hope someone can help enlighten us to best practices0 -
Duplicate content from development website
Hi all - I've been trawling for duplicate content and then I stumbled across a development URL, set up by a previous web developer, which nearly mirrors current site (few content and structure changes since then, but otherwise it's all virtually the same). The developer didn't take it down when the site was launched. I'm guessing the best thing to do is tell him to take down the development URL (which is specific to the pizza joint btw, immediately. Is there anything else I should ask him to do? Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Should I Combine 30 websites into one?
I have a Private health care company that I have just begun consulting for. Currently in addition to the main website serving the whole group, 30 individual sites which are for each of the hospitals in their group. Each has it's own domain. Each site, has practically identical content: something that will be addressed in my initial audits. But should I suggest that they combine all the sites into one domain, providing individual category pages for each hosptial, or am I really going to suggest that each of the 30 sites, create unique content of their own. This means thirty pages of content on "hip replacements" thirty different versions of "our treatement" etc, and bearing in mind they all run off the same CMS, even with different body text, the pages are going to be practically identical. It's a big call either way! The reason they started out with all these sites, is that each hospital is it's own cost centre and whilst the web development team is a centralized resource. They each have their own sites to try and rank indivdually for local searches, naturally as they will each tend to get customers from their own local area. Not every hospital provides the full range of treatments.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ultramod0 -
Simple Press forum for wordpress
I'm using a forum plugin called Simple Press, and the rest of my site is looking good with only a few minor errors due to a long url. Anyway, the only 4 major errors I have are these; These 3 links have no titles, so is there somewhere I can give them titles, or do a rel=nofollow? /index.php?sf_ahah=acknowledge /index.php?sf_ahah=permissions /index.php?sf_ahah=tags And then the 3 above plus this one; http://www.societyforethicsand…..?xfeed=all Have no META DESCRIPTION associated with them. So, is there somewhere I can add the meta description for all 4? I have spoken to support, and it turns out the first 3 links with no titles are ajax content for pop ups, instead of waiting for them to work out how to resolve this issue, does anyone know how to stop them coming up as major errors?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CosmikCarrot0 -
What To Do For A Website That is Mainly Images
I have a website that is a desktop wallpaper script. People can come and upload 100's of wallpapers to share with the community. This is were the problems comes in. Files are normally called 27636dark.jpg or whatever and come with no description. This leads to 2 things. no text content that google can use to know what the page/image is about. Meta descriptions, URL's just look like spam. Example: /car-wallpapers/7636dark.jpg If a text description was added, it would still only be like "Green Trees in the distance". Which as you may guess, with 1,000's of wallpapers... would end up having a lot of descriptions the same. Is there any advice for sites that focus on image driven content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rhysmaster0