Your tag and category pages could be very important pages on your site. If you’re using these pages in the right way, they can boost your site’s SEO. You might wonder if you should also include these taxonomy pages in your XML sitemap. In this Ask Yoast we explain whether you should, and why!
Our support team received the following question from a Yoast SEO user:
“I just installed Yoast SEO. Should I include taxonomies, like tags and categories in my XML sitemap?”
Check out the video or read the answer below!
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Include taxonomies in XML sitemap
Read this transcript to learn how you’ll benefit from including taxonomies in your XML sitemap:
“Well, of course you should, that’s what we do by default. We do that for a reason. Your tags and your categories could be very important pages on your site.
We have a post on yoast.com about category SEO, that you should really have a look at. We think that if you do your job well, then your category pages could rank for terms that your posts might never rank for. Because every post that you write in a specific category or tag, links back to that category or that tag. So those pages become very powerful. And if you optimize them well, they can very well become pages that rank in the search results. Good luck!”
Ask Yoast
In the series Ask Yoast we help you with your SEO question! Did you get stuck on an SEO issue? Are you in doubt between two SEO strategies? Don’t fret, just ask us your question! You can send your question to ask@yoast.com.
Read more: ‘ Using category and tag pages for your site’s SEO’ »