A sitemap is a file your website provides to search engines like Google. It lists all your pages and tells search engines how important each one is, which helps them decide how often to check each page and how prominently to show it in search results.
The Sitemaps page lets you set the default importance (called priority) for four different types of content on your site. These defaults apply to every page of that type unless you override the priority on an individual blog or post.
What you can do here
From the SEO > Sitemap page, you can set the default sitemap priority for:
- Content Pages. Regular pages on your site, like your home page, About page, or Contact page.
- Content Pages Navigation. Pages that appear in your main navigation menu.
- Blogs. The main page for each blog (the container that holds posts).
- Posts. Individual articles inside a blog.
About sitemap priority
Sitemap priority is a value between 0.0 and 1.0 that tells search engines how important a page is compared to other pages on your site.
- 1.0 is the highest priority.
- 0.0 is the lowest priority.
- Most pages fall somewhere in between, in steps of 0.1 (for example, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6).
Priority is relative. It doesn't directly affect your search rankings, but it helps search engines understand which pages on your site matter most to you. Setting every page to 1.0 doesn't help, because the values are only meaningful when compared to each other.
Suggested values
The defaults are a good starting point for most sites:
- Content Pages: 0.8
- Content Pages Navigation: 0.6
- Blogs: 0.5
- Posts: 0.4
You can adjust these if certain types of content are more or less important on your site. For example, if your blog is a major part of your business, you might raise the Blogs and Posts priorities.
Update your sitemap priorities
Step 1: Open the Sitemap page
- From the left sidebar, click SEO.
- Click the Sitemap tab.
Step 2: Adjust the priorities
For each content type, use the up and down arrows to change the priority value. The value moves in 0.1 steps between 0.0 and 1.0.
- Click the up arrow to raise the priority.
- Click the down arrow to lower the priority.
Step 3: Save
Click Save & Publish in the top right corner.
How these defaults work with individual blogs and posts
The values on the Sitemap page are the defaults. When you create a new blog or post, it starts out with the matching default priority.
You can override the default on any individual blog or post by going to its SEO tab and adjusting the Sitemap Priority field there. That override only applies to that one blog or post and doesn't change the site-wide default.
If you change the default on the Sitemap page later, your override on an individual blog or post is not affected.