Sitemap tag definitions | Experienced Webmaster

The following table outlines the tags required for Sitemaps listing web URLs. To add more detailed information about specific content types.

Tag Required? Description <urlset>  Required  Encloses all information about the set of URLs included in the Sitemap. <url>  Required  Encloses all information about a specific URL. <loc>  Required  Specifies the URL. For images and video, specifies the landing page (aka play page, referrer page). Must be a unique URL. <lastmod>  Optional  The date the URL was last modifed, in YYYY-MM-DDThh:mmTZD format (time value is optional). <changefreq>  Optional  Provides a hint about how frequently the page is likely to change. Valid values are: always. Use for pages that change every time they are accessed. Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. never.  Use this value for archived URLs. <priority>  Optional  Describes the priority of a URL relative to all the other URLs on the site. This priority can range from 1.0 (extremely important) to 0.1 (not important at all).         Does not affect your site's ranking in Google search results. Because this value is relative to other pages on your site, assigning a high priority (or specifying the same priority for all URLs) will not help your site's search ranking. In addition, setting all pages to the same priority will have no effect.