Lastmod, Priority, and Changefreq

Introduction

Changing the <loc> entry data can be useful for a variety of reasons, such as changing the changefreq, priority, or lastmod values.

If you're using Dynamic URLs, you can modify the data in the sitemap object, otherwise, you will need to override the app sources directly.

While modifying these in most cases may be unnecessary, see Best Practices, it can be useful when used right.

Setting Defaults

While this is not recommended, in special circumstances you may wish to set defaults for your sitemap entries:

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  sitemap: {
    defaults: {
      lastmod: new Date().toISOString(),
      priority: 0.5,
      changefreq: 'weekly'
    }
  }
})

Data Source Merging

You can provide the page you want to set the lastmod, priority, or changefreq for in your app sources, which includes the urls config.

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  sitemap: {
    urls: [
      {
        loc: '/about',
        lastmod: '2023-01-01',
        priority: 0.3,
        changefreq: 'daily'
      }
    ]
  }
})

Modify Loc Data With Route Rules

To change the behaviour of your sitemap URLs, you can use Route rules.

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  routeRules: {
    // Don't add any /secret/** URLs to the sitemap.xml
    '/secret/**': { robots: false },
    // modify the sitemap.xml entry for specific URLs
    '/about': { sitemap: { changefreq: 'daily', priority: 0.3 } }
  }
})

Alternatively, you can use the experimental macro defineRouteRules, which must be enabled.

<script setup>
defineRouteRules({
  sitemap: {
    changefreq: 'daily',
    priority: 0.3
  }
})
</script>

Lastmod: Prerendering Hints

When prerendering your site, you can make use of setting the article:modified_time meta tag in your page's head. This meta tag will be used as the lastmod value in your sitemap.

<script setup>
useSeoMeta({
  // will be inferred as the lastmod value in the sitemap
  articleModifiedTime: '2023-01-01'
})
</script>