SEO for Solos
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Chapter 07Paid

Sitemaps and feeds

Differentiated lastModified, a priority ladder that says something, hreflang per URL, and an RSS feed generated from the same source so the two cannot disagree.

4 min read · updated 2026-07-26· last reviewed 2026-07-26

This is the highest-value idea in the chapter, so it goes first. A sitemap claiming that 2,100 pages all changed at 03:14 this morning is not a freshness signal. It is noise, and a crawler that encounters it a few times learns that your lastmod field carries no information and stops reading it.

You do not get that trust back by fixing it later. You are then a site with a correct lastmod that nobody reads.

The rest of "Sitemaps and feeds"

867 words covering 4 sections, with the implementation code for 8 checks. The table of contents below is the full outline, so you can see exactly what is behind this.

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What this chapter covers

  • One build timestamp on 2,100 URLs is worse than none
    • The principle
    • The implementation
  • The priority ladder
    • The principle
    • The implementation
  • The integrity test
    • The principle
    • The implementation
  • Feeds
    • The principle
    • The implementation

Checks this chapter covers

Each one has a command you can run against your own site.