SEO Smart Engine
Log inSign up

XML Sitemap Generator

Help Google and Bing discover and index every important page on your site.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

</urlset>

What an XML sitemap actually does

An XML sitemap is a structured list of URLs you want search engines to know about. It does not force indexing, but it accelerates discovery, signals canonical preferences, and gives crawlers metadata (last-modified date, change frequency, priority) that helps them schedule re-crawls efficiently. For large sites, a missing or stale sitemap is one of the most common causes of the dreaded "Discovered - currently not indexed" status in Google Search Console.

Sitemap structure

A standard sitemap.xml uses the http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 namespace and contains one <url> entry per page. Each entry supports four child elements:

  • loc - the absolute URL (required, must use the same protocol and subdomain as the sitemap).
  • lastmod - ISO-8601 date of last content change. Google uses this aggressively to prioritize re-crawls.
  • changefreq - informational only; Google has stated they mostly ignore it.
  • priority - relative importance (0.0-1.0) within your own site. Also mostly ignored by Google.

Keep individual sitemaps under 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed. Beyond that, split into multiple sitemaps and reference them from a sitemap index file.

Specialized sitemaps

  • Image sitemap: add <image:image> children to surface gallery and product images.
  • Video sitemap: required for video rich results in Google Search.
  • News sitemap: 48-hour window for Google News inclusion; uses a different schema.
  • Hreflang sitemap: alternates for multi-language sites - often easier than per-page hreflang tags.

How to submit

  1. Upload the file to your domain root: https://example.com/sitemap.xml.
  2. Reference it in robots.txt: Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml.
  3. Submit in Google Search Console → Sitemaps.
  4. Submit in Bing Webmaster Tools → Sitemaps.
  5. Ping IndexNow on new URLs for instant Bing/Yandex/Naver discovery.

Frequently asked questions

Do I really need a sitemap?

For sites under ~500 URLs with clean internal linking, no - Google will find your pages. For larger sites, JavaScript-heavy SPAs, sites with orphan pages, or any site relying on programmatic SEO, a sitemap is essential.

Should I include every URL?

Only canonical, indexable URLs you want ranked. Exclude duplicates, parameterized URLs, redirected pages, and anything with noindex. A sitemap full of garbage tells Google you don't curate your content.

How often should I update the sitemap?

Whenever you publish, update, or remove a URL. Automated CMSs handle this automatically; static sites should regenerate on every deploy. Stale lastmod dates can suppress re-crawl frequency.

Does priority actually matter?

Almost not at all for Google. Set everything to 0.8 and focus your effort on lastmod accuracy and overall internal linking - those move the needle.