How to Create and Submit an XML Sitemap

What an XML sitemap does

An XML sitemap lists the URLs you want search engines to know about, optionally with a last-modified date, change frequency and priority. It is a hint, not a guarantee: crawlers still decide what to fetch and index.

What to include — and exclude

Include: canonical, indexable pages that return HTTP 200.

Exclude:

• Redirects (3xx) and errors (4xx/5xx)
• noindex pages
• Duplicate or parameterised URLs
• Pages blocked in robots.txt

A sitemap full of non-canonical URLs wastes crawl budget and dilutes signals.

Structure and size limits

• A single sitemap may contain up to 50,000 URLs and be 50 MB uncompressed.
• Beyond that, use a sitemap index that references multiple sitemaps.
• Only absolute URLs are valid.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/page</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-09-16</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

Generate one with the free XML sitemap generator.

Submit it the right way

1. Add a Sitemap: line to robots.txt.
2. In Google Search Console → Sitemaps, submit your sitemap URL.
3. In Bing Webmaster Tools, do the same.
4. Keep lastmod accurate — stale dates reduce trust.

Best practices

• One canonical URL per page. No duplicates.
• Update lastmod only when content really changes.
• Split by content type (pages, products, blog) for clearer reporting.
• Verify status codes. A sitemap pointing at 404s is worse than none — audit with the HTTP status checker.
• Reference it in robots.txt so every crawler finds it.

Common mistakes

1. Listing redirected or noindex URLs.
2. Forgetting the sitemap after a site migration.
3. Using relative URLs.
4. Including thousands of low-value pages.
5. Never updating lastmod.

Generate and submit

Create a clean sitemap with the XML sitemap generator, then submit it in Search Console — it takes two minutes.