Best SEO Checklist
ONE FOCUSED ACTION

Implement News-Specific Sitemap to Prioritize Fresh Content Crawling.

Crawl-budget optimization

1 checklist items

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    Why this matters

    Separate news content in a dedicated sitemap to boost crawl priority and timely indexation by search engines.

    A STARTING-POINT EXAMPLE

    Hypothetical standard operating procedure

    Adapt this example to your site, access, tools, and change process. It is our suggested procedure, informed by the sources below.

    1. Create a separate XML news sitemap conforming to the News Sitemap protocol.
    2. Include only news articles published within the last 48 hours.
    3. Submit the news sitemap URL to Google and Bing webmaster tools.
    4. Regularly update the news sitemap to remove older articles and add new ones.
    5. Monitor crawling and indexing of news URLs through Search Console reports.

    Watch for

    Including outdated news articles in the news sitemap may dilute freshness signals and crawl priority.

    Definition of done

    News sitemap includes only fresh news URLs with accurate publication dates and is submitted to search engines.

    Sources & attribution

    1. Crawl Budget Optimization - LinkGraph ↗
    2. Crawl Budget Optimization: A Technical Guide for SEO - FreeDevKit ↗

    Original checklist wording and example SOP by Best SEO Checklist, using source-grounded AI assistance. Editorial contact: Ted Kubaitis, @tedkubaitis on Teams. Check current source guidance before implementation.