An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the URLs of a website to help search engines like Google efficiently crawl and index them Sitemaps act as a roadmap for search engine crawlers to navigate a website and discover new or updated content quickly
Having an XML sitemap is crucial for any website looking to improve their SEO and ranking in search results In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about XML sitemaps, including
- What is an XML Sitemap
- How Sitemaps Help with SEO
- Types of Sitemaps
- What to Include in a Sitemap
- Sitemap Guidelines and Best Practices
- How to Create and Submit Sitemaps
- Sitemap Tools and Plugins
What is an XML Sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a file that provides search engines with a list of all the important pages on a website. It is an XML formatted file that contains information like:
- URLs of all public pages and content of a website
- Last modified date of each URL
- Update frequency of each URL
- Priority of each URL
Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo rely on sitemaps to crawl websites efficiently. Sitemaps act as a guide to help search engine crawlers index new or updated content faster.
Without a sitemap, search engines have to crawl every link on a site to discover new or changed content. But with a sitemap, they are directly pointed to new pages or updates, saving a ton of crawling resources.
That’s why having a comprehensive and updated sitemap is critical for search engines to properly crawl, index and rank your important pages.
How XML Sitemaps Help with SEO
Here are some of the main SEO benefits of having an XML sitemap:
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Improves Indexation – Sitemaps help search engines index URLs, especially new or recently updated pages that don’t have many backlinks yet. This improves overall indexation of your website.
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Faster Indexing – By pointing crawlers directly to new or changed content, sitemaps significantly speed up the indexing of that content.
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Discoverability of Pages – Even if some pages on your site are “orphaned” without many internal links, sitemaps can help search engines discover and crawl them.
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Understand Site Structure – Sitemaps give crawlers a nice overview of your website structure, internal linking architecture and priority pages.
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Prioritization of Important Pages – You can assign priority values in sitemap to highlight your most important pages to search engines.
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Updated Content Discovery – The last modified time in sitemaps help search engines quickly identify and crawl updated content on your site.
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Low Link Indexation – For sites with few external links, sitemaps are critical for search engines to discover their pages with limited link signals.
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Indexing of Media Files – You can include image, video and news sitemaps to improve media content indexing.
Clearly, XML sitemaps are incredibly beneficial for improving overall SEO visibility and search traffic.
Types of XML Sitemaps
There are a few different types of sitemaps you can utilize:
1. Index Sitemap
An index sitemap acts as the parent sitemap file. It contains references to other sitemap files like:
- Page sitemaps
- Category sitemaps
- Tag sitemaps
- Media sitemaps
For large websites, you would create separate sitemap files for pages, posts, tags, images etc. and reference them in one parent index sitemap.
2. HTML Sitemap
An HTML sitemap is meant for human visitors to easily navigate a website, not for search engines.
It contains clickable links to important pages structured in a hierarchical format. HTML sitemaps help visitors find pages that are hard to locate through regular navigation.
3. RSS Feed Sitemap
An RSS sitemap is useful for notifying search engines about new content published on a site.
It contains a feed of the latest updates on a website. Unlike XML sitemaps which list all pages, RSS sitemaps only list recent additions and changes.
4. Video Sitemap
A video sitemap is used to optimize video content for search engines. It contains meta information about videos like:
- Titles
- Descriptions
- Thumbnails
- Duration
Video sitemaps help improve indexing and ranking of videos in search results.
5. Image Sitemap
An image sitemap helps search engines discover images on your site along with the web page they are found on.
It contains image locations, captions, titles and licenses to optimize image SEO.
6. News Sitemap
A Google News sitemap is meant for those who publish news content.
It allows you to control which articles are submitted to Google News and helps index timely news content.
7. Mobile Sitemap
A mobile sitemap indicates to search engines the separate mobile version of your website pages, if you have one.
It helps search bots better crawl and index the mobile-friendly version of your site.
8. Multilingual/Multi-regional Sitemap
This type of sitemap is used when you have a website available in multiple languages or specific to different regions/countries.
It helps search engines discover the different translated or localized versions of your pages.
What to Include in an XML Sitemap
When building a sitemap, focus on including pages you want search engines to crawl, index and show up in search results. Avoid including:
- Error or broken pages
- Pages with duplicate content
- Pages blocked in robots.txt
- Pages with noindex tag
- Irrelevant pages like contact thank you pages
Specifically, include these types of pages:
- Blog posts
- Important category pages
- High priority product/service pages
- Main site sections and content pages
- Popular landing pages
- Curated articles or content
Ensure your sitemap only contains canonical pages without any duplicates.
Use the priority and last modified tags to highlight the significance and freshness of each URL.
For large websites, split up your sitemaps with separate sitemap files for pages, posts, categories, tags, images etc.
XML Sitemap Guidelines
Follow these key guidelines when creating or updating your XML sitemaps:
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Limited to 50,000 URLs – Maintain fewer than 50,000 URLs per sitemap file. For larger sites, use sitemap index and split into multiple sitemaps.
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Maximum File Size 50MB – Keep each sitemap file size under 50MB uncompressed. Large sitemaps impact crawling efficiency.
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Update Frequency – Re-submit your sitemap to search engines frequently as you add new content or pages.
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Noindex Pages – Use noindex meta tag instead of excluding pages from sitemap, so they don’t get indexed.
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Last Modified Date – Include accurate last modified date for each URL, based on when content was changed.
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Mobile URLs – List separate mobile URLs in mobile sitemap to improve mobile indexing.
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Page Priority – Assign relative priority values (0.1 to 1.0) to highlight important pages to search engines.
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Media Files – Include all important media files in dedicated video, image and news sitemaps.
How to Create and Submit an XML Sitemap
Follow these steps to generate, validate and submit your XML sitemaps:
1. Create Sitemap Files
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Use a sitemap generator tool to create your XML sitemaps and split into separate files for large sites.
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Manually create sitemap files if you have a smaller website.
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Make sure to follow XML syntax with <urlset> tags.
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List each URL on a new line along with priority and last mod values.
2. Validate Sitemap
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Validate your sitemap at https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xml-sitemap.html to check for errors.
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Fix any issues with formatting or incorrect tags before moving to next step.
3. Submit Sitemap to Search Engines
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Submit your sitemaps to Google Search Console for indexing.
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Add your sitemap URL in the robots.txt file for search engine crawlers to discover.
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Ping major search engines whenever you update the sitemap with new content.
4. Monitor Errors
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Use Search Console or analytics to monitor indexation errors or warnings related to your sitemaps.
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Debug and fix any issues like crawling errors, formatting problems, or blocked URLs.
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Re-submit corrected sitemaps and ping search engines again.
Sitemap Generator Tools
Instead of manually creating XML sitemaps, you can use free or paid tools to auto
How to Generate an XML Sitemap
It’s likely that the platform you use to manage your website’s content automatically generates and updates your XML sitemap.
You may be able to find yours by going to yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml in your browser.
Like this:
(This should work if you’re using WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify.)
Otherwise, refer to the help center for your website builder or content management system (CMS). Or contact your platform’s support team.
If your platform doesn’t provide an XML sitemap, you can use a sitemap generator tool.
These tools can also prove helpful if you want more control over your sitemap. For example, you can customize your WordPress sitemap with the Yoast SEO plugin.
If you use a tool outside of your platform to create a sitemap, make sure to publish it to your site to make it live.
Tip
Some platforms/tools let you manually edit your XML sitemap. This is useful if you want to remove certain URLs or add extra detail, but it’s important to exercise caution to avoid making mistakes. Ask a developer for help if you’re unsure.
What Does an XML Sitemap Look Like?
An XML sitemap (or sitemap.xml file) looks something like this:
It’s called an XML sitemap because it’s written in Extensible Markup Language (XML).
If you’re interested in the details, the main tags used are:
: Encloses all the tags for each sitemap : Encloses all the tags for each URL : Specifies the page’s complete URL : Specifies when the page was last updated (optional) : Specifies how frequently the page is likely to change (optional) : Specifies the relative importance of the page from 0.0 to 1.0 (optional)
Note
Google ignores the
Webmasters can also create dedicated , video, and news sitemaps. To help search engines understand these specific types of content.
If you need to create more than one sitemap, you need a sitemap index. Which essentially acts as a sitemap for your sitemaps.
XML Sitemaps: What They Are, Why They Matter, How To Create & Submit One.
How do you create an XML sitemap?
Head over to Google Search Console and upload the file so Google can crawl and index your site, here’s how: Sign in to your GSC account and select your site on the sidebar In the “add a new sitemap” field, add “sitemap.xml” to the end of your site URL
What is the purpose of an XML sitemap?
XML sitemaps enable you to quickly and easily notify search engines about all the pages in your website and any changes. This ensures they are indexed quickly and correctly, especially with new websites which have lower natural discoverability.
How do you create a sitemap?
Start by generating the sitemap URL using tools like SEO Site Checkup. After that, submit it to Google via Google Search Console: Create a Search Console account if you don’t have one already. Head to Sitemaps on the left navigation bar. Enter the sitemap URL on the Add a new sitemap section.
How do you submit an XML sitemap to Google?
Go to SEO > General > Features. Make sure the “XML sitemaps” toggle is on. You should now see your sitemap (or sitemap index) at either yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml or yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml.
