XML sitemaps may sound technical, but they’re very simple, often auto-generated within content management systems (CMS), and essential for achieving SEO success. Without a sitemap, you’re relying ...

Figure 3. Big XML files. Click on thumbnail to view full-sized image. Eight years since its inception, XML has already taken off as an open, semi-structured data format for storing data as well as ...

Google confirms that automatically setting current dates in XML sitemaps provides no ranking benefit. Sitemap dates should only be updated when actual content changes. Google can easily identify and ...

Google's John Mueller spoke a bit more about when you should update the date in the lastmod tag in the XML sitemap file. He said on Twitter if you are "providing something new for search engines that ...

For those of us who have spent entire careers working with structured data, it comes as something of a surprise to be reminded that XML is now 25 years old. You probably missed the XML standard on the ...

Not to be confused with HTML sitemaps, which are designed to be viewed by humans, XML sitemaps are solely for search engines. Given that XML sitemaps are intended to assist Google, site owners may ...