XML Sitemaps settings for simple websites

[JohnW-UK]

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.

[eyepaq]

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.

[JohnW-UK]

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risk if a lastmod date is left to be 12-18 months old the search engines may start penalising the site as they deem its out of date or am I assuming they will do this by analysing the cached copies and seeing there have been no changes?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.