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FREE
+50 XP
XML Sitemaps
๐บ๏ธ
XML sitemap explains itself
"I'm like a subway map for Googlebot. Without me, the bot can wander around a site for hours and still miss important pages. With me โ it finds everything in minutes."
๐ XML sitemap โ a file on your server that lists all important URLs with metadata: last modified date, priority, and change frequency.
XML Sitemap Structure
<?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>2026-01-15</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
</urlset>
What to Include in Your Sitemap
| โ Include | โ Exclude |
|---|---|
| Main category pages | Pages with noindex tag |
| Product and service pages | Pages with redirects (3xx) |
| Blog articles with good content | Error pages (4xx, 5xx) |
| Keyword-targeted landing pages | Duplicate content pages |
How to Register Your Sitemap
Create sitemap.xml
Manually or via plugin (Yoast, Rank Math)
โ
Add to robots.txt
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
โ
Submit in GSC
Sitemaps โ Submit a new sitemap
๐
Alex after submitting the sitemap
"Submitted a sitemap with 200 pages in GSC. Three days later, Google had indexed all of them. Without it, we'd have been waiting weeks."
๐ก Pro tip: for large sites (>50,000 pages), use a Sitemap Index โ a master file that references multiple individual sitemaps organized by section.
๐ฎ Test yourself: in which file should you reference the path to your XML sitemap?
Lesson Task
Test your knowledge and earn +20 XP