How important is the optional <priority>tag in an XML sitemap of your website? Can this help search engines understand the hierarchy of a website?</priority>
-
Can the <priority>tag be used to tell search engines the hierarchy of a site or should it be used to let search engines know which priority to we want pages to be indexed in?</priority>
-
Hi,
If you would deem all internal pages to be of equal importance, then yes, there is no harm in this. The homepage is always set at 1.0 though.
That said, everyone always has a view of their internal pages and which they class as pass-though to get to something more important, so do keep this in mind when deciding.
-Andy
-
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the response. We are a local listings site and have a number of category/sub-category/business-detail pages (possibly at a city as well as a location level) in the structure of our site. This being the case, what would you suggest the priority to be allocated to the different pages should be? If just an indication to the bots to specify all the important pages on the site to crawl, then should we just maintain the same priority (say 0.8) for all the hierarchies (possibly with the home page as 1.0)?
-
It's a suggestion, and just indicates to Googlebot how often they should come along. It won't do anything in terms of telling them more about the site hierarchy really, but will give them an idea about which pages are most important.
That said, you should try and follow the following structure:
Homepage: 100%
Internal Pages: 60%
Blog Pages: 30%Or something very similar.
I hope this helps.
-Andy
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
-
Key word with city or town or local search for a nation wide website
Hi We need some expert advise here, we are dealing with batteries, tyres, online at nation level in india, and we have dealer registered with us at local places... and also we dont show the dealer details on the product page, once the order is recieved will be pass on the deal locally... we want rank well in the local key words search as many of times user search for "buy car battery in bangalore" here is bangalore is one location.. We want to develop one url like this www.abc.com/car-battery/bangalore/productname.html and also i will add breadcrumb like this car-battery>Bangalore > Productname which will be canonical to www.abc.com/productname.html (where product details are there). Pls suggest is this way i should go.. or??
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
Does anyone know how dynamic/personalized website content affects SEO?
A client using Marketo has inquired about personalizing their website content to be personalized based on a persona. To be clear, I'm talking about key website pages, maybe even the Home page, not PPC/campaign specific landing pages. For example, areas of on the site would change to display content differently to a CEO vs a sales person. I'm new to marketing automation and don't exactly know how this piece works. Hoping someone here has experience or can provide pros/cons guidance. How would search engines work with this type of page? Here's Marketo's site explaining what it does: https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Web+Personalization+-+RTP
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Flock.Media0 -
Google Webmaster Tools -> Sitemap suddent "indexed" drop
Hello MOZ, We had an massive SEO drop in June due to unknown reasons and we have been trying to recover since then. I've just noticed this yesterday and I'm worried. See: http://imgur.com/xv2QgCQ Could anyone help by explaining what would cause this sudden drop and what does this drop translates to exactly? What is strange is that our index status is still strong at 310 pages, no drop there: http://imgur.com/a1sRAKo And when I do search on google site:globecar.com everything seems normal see: http://imgur.com/O7vPkqu Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GlobeCar0 -
Can you use multiple rel alternate tags for different device subdomains?
When redirecting from desktop to mobile with a separate URL structure, you need to have a rel alternate - rel canonical handshake to define the relationship between the pages. But if you have a different subdomain for different mobile devices, can you add more than one rel alternate tag on the desktop page? EG if site.com is redirecting to iphone.site.com, m.site.com, android.site.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdiRste0 -
Best option for Affiliate links on your website?
Hello! I have a website which is completely affiliate based. What is the best option for the links on-page? Examples would be: affiliate.website.com/12901730?2=3532523=user12342901730?2=3532523=user?Whittie www.website.com/affiliate=user?Whittie=load-of-tracking=date=blah=blaH?blah And So on... Which look ugly as sin when you hover over the Anchor Text. Ideally I would like a 301 redirect to mysite.com/goto/affiliatename, which would then have a rel nofollow. This way I could also track the exit pages via Analytics too guess, which I've not currently got set up and i'm desperate for it to be done. Does this method effect anything on search engines though? I've seen mixed report, but going back to 2011 which is too long ago in the SEO world. Another option is to use the likes of "Bit.ly" or use another domain and host 301s on there? The new bit.ly integration from moz might come in handy here. Please advise on the subject, I really appreciate any help on this, as i'm at a brick wall. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whittie0 -
Https://www.mywebsite.com/blog/tag/wolf/ setting tag pages as blog corner stone article?
We do not have enough content rich page to target all of our keywords. Because of that My SEO guy wants to set some corner stone blog articles in order to rank them for certain key words on Google. He is asking me to use the following rule in our article writing(We have blog on our website):
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlirezaHamidian
For example in our articles when we use keyword "wolf", link them to the blog page:
https://www.mywebsite.com/blog/tag/wolf/
It seems like a good idea because in the tag page there are lots of material with the Keyword "wolf" . But the problem is when I search for keyword "wolf" for example on the Google, some other blog pages are ranked higher than this tag page. But he tells me in long run it is a better strategy. Any idea on this?0 -
Video XML Sitemap
I've been recently been information by our dev team that we are not allowed legally to make our raw video files available in a video XML sitemap...This is one of the required tags. Has anyone run into a similar situation and has figured out a way around it? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Margarita
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MargaritaS0 -
Zip Code Blocks the Search Engines!
I have a site where when you visit the product pages, it asks for your zip code. This is obviously blocking the bots from crawling the site. I know you can basically tell the bots how to ignore the zip code feature but I am not exactly sure how to do this. Any help would be appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lhawk0