XML Sitemaps - how to create the perfect XML Sitemap

[JohnW-UK]

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?
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 practices

[AlanMosley]

1 Yes, Bing have stated that they will ignore the sitemap if it is not accurate

2. no

3, no

4 yes

5 no, use priorities for that

6  looks ok

I would look into using the Google and Bing sitemap generators, problem solved (if you have access to the server)

http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2013/05/23/bing-sitemap-plugin-1-0-launch.aspx
http://googlesitemapgenerator.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/doc/gsg-installation.html