An XML sitemap is a roadmap of your website that you give to search engines, helping them discover and index all your important content more efficiently. Our free Sitemap.xml Generator makes it easy to create a perfectly formatted sitemap, giving you full control over how search engines see and prioritize your pages.

How to Create Your XML Sitemap

Our tool provides a simple interface for building your sitemap file:

1. The tool starts with a few example rows. Modify them or remove them with the "×" button.
2. Click the "Add URL" button to add a new row for each page you want to include.
3. For each row, paste the full URL of your page in the URL Location field. This is the only required field.
4. (Optional but Recommended) Adjust the Last Modified date, Change Frequency, and Priority for each URL.
5. The "Generated Sitemap.xml" box will update automatically as you work.
6. When you are finished, click "Copy Sitemap XML".
7. Paste the copied code into a new text file and save it as `sitemap.xml`. Upload this file to the root directory of your website.

Example Sitemap Output

Here is an example of what the generated code for a few pages might look like. This is the format that search engines expect to see.

  
    https://example.com/
    2023-10-27
    daily
    1.0
  
  
    https://example.com/about
    2023-10-01
    monthly
    0.8
  

What is an XML Sitemap and Why is it Important for SEO?

An XML Sitemap is a file that lists all the important URLs on your website. It acts as a direct line of communication to search engines like Google, telling them which pages you consider important and providing valuable metadata about them. While search engines can discover your pages by crawling links, a sitemap ensures they can find all your content, especially pages that may not have many internal links pointing to them.

The key benefits of having a sitemap include:

• Faster Indexing: It helps search engines discover new content or recently updated pages much more quickly.
• Improved Crawl Coverage: For large websites or sites with complex navigation, a sitemap ensures that deep pages are not missed by crawlers.
• Providing Context: You can provide helpful metadata for each URL using specific tags:
  • ``: The absolute URL of the page. (Required)
  • ``: The date the page was last modified. (Optional)
  • ``: A hint to crawlers about how often the page is likely to change. (Optional)
  • ``: A hint about the page's importance relative to other pages on your site, on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0. (Optional)

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q1: How many URLs can I include in one sitemap file?

A single sitemap file has a limit of 50,000 URLs and must be no larger than 50MB when uncompressed. If your site is larger than this, you can create a sitemap index file, which is a sitemap that lists other sitemaps. Our tool is designed for creating single sitemap files.

Q2: Where do I put the `sitemap.xml` file on my website?

You should place your `sitemap.xml` file in the root directory of your website. Search engines will look for it at `https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml`.

Q3: How do I tell Google about my sitemap?

There are two primary ways. The best method is to submit your sitemap's URL directly through Google Search Console. This allows you to see indexing status and any potential errors. Alternatively, you can add a line to your `robots.txt` file like this: `Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml`.