Ultimate sitemap guide for beginners

• Sitemap size limits are 50 MB (uncompressed) or 50,000 URLs per file—exceed either and you must split into multiple sitemaps using a sitemap index file.
• Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console and reference it in robots.txt—Search Console provides detailed indexing reports; robots.txt ensures all crawlers can discover it passively.
• Google deprecated the sitemap ping endpoint in 2023—HTTP “pings” to the old REST endpoint now return a 404 error. Use Search Console or robots.txt instead.
• Only include canonical, indexable URLs in your sitemap—avoid noindex pages, redirects, and non-indexable content. Google also ignores the changefreq and priority tags.
• XML is the most versatile sitemap format—it’s extensible and can supply additional data about images, video, and news content.

• Your site is large (generally over 500 pages)—it’s harder to ensure every page is linked internally
• Your site is new and has few external links—Googlebot may not discover your pages otherwise
• Your site has rich media content (video, images) or appears in Google News

• Your site is small (about 500 pages or fewer)
• Your site is comprehensively linked internally—Googlebot can find all important pages from the home page
• You don’t have many media files or news pages you want indexed

• Extensible and versatile
• Provides the most information about your URLs
• Most CMS platforms generate sitemaps automatically

• Can be cumbersome to work with on larger sites

• Don’t list videos unrelated to the host page content
• All video files must be accessible to Googlebot (not blocked by robots.txt, firewalls, or login requirements)

• Only include articles published in the last two days
• Update with fresh articles as they’re published
• Remove older URLs once articles pass the two-day window

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider—crawls your site and exports sitemap files
• XML-Sitemaps.com—online generator for smaller sites
• Custom scripts—using Python, PHP, or other languages with the sitemap protocol

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
 <url>
 <loc>https://example.com/page1</loc>
 <lastmod>2026-08-01</lastmod>
 </url>
 <url>
 <loc>https://example.com/page2</loc>
 <lastmod>2026-07-15</lastmod>
 </url>
</urlset>

• The sitemap file must be UTF-8 encoded
• You can host your sitemap anywhere on your site, but it must be accessible to Googlebot
• Google ignores the changefreq and priority tags in 2026—focus on including the right URLs rather than worrying about these values

1. Sign in to Google Search Console and select your property
2. In the left sidebar, click Indexing → Sitemaps
3. Enter your sitemap URL in the Add a new sitemap field
4. Click Submit

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml

Best practice: Use both methods. Declaring the sitemap in robots.txt ensures all crawlers find it passively, and Search Console provides detailed indexing reports.

• Canonical URLs—the version you want indexed
• Indexable URLs—pages that return a 200 status code and are not marked with noindex
• Clean HTTPS URLs—avoid listing URLs that redirect

• Pages with noindex tags
• URLs that redirect (301/302)
• Duplicate content variations
• Paginated pages (unless you want them indexed separately)
• Search result pages
• Login or admin pages

• Dynamic sitemaps that update automatically are best for blogs, e-commerce sites, and any site publishing content regularly
• For CMS platforms like WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin updates the sitemap whenever you publish, modify, or delete content
• For custom sites, implement a script that regenerates the sitemap on content changes

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
 <sitemap>
 <loc>https://example.com/sitemap-posts.xml</loc>
 <lastmod>2026-08-01</lastmod>
 </sitemap>
 <sitemap>
 <loc>https://example.com/sitemap-products.xml</loc>
 <lastmod>2026-07-15</lastmod>
 </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

• Referenced sitemaps must be in the same directory as the index file, or lower in the site hierarchy
• The index file can reference up to 50,000 sitemaps

• Check which sitemaps were processed successfully
• View the number of discovered and indexed URLs
• Identify errors and warnings
• Track index coverage over time

1. Sitemaps are not required for small, well-linked sites—but they help large sites, new sites, and sites with rich media content.
2. Size limits are 50,000 URLs and 50 MB (uncompressed)—exceed either and you must split into multiple sitemaps with an index file.
3. Google deprecated the sitemap ping endpoint in 2023—submit sitemaps through Search Console or robots.txt only.
4. XML is the most versatile sitemap format—extensible for images, video, news, and localized content.
5. Only include canonical, indexable URLs—avoid noindex pages, redirects, and duplicate content.
6. Google ignores changefreq and priority tags in 2026—focus on including the right URLs.
7. Use both Search Console and robots.txt for sitemap submission—they serve different purposes.
8. Monitor sitemap performance in Search Console regularly to catch issues early.

• Moz – The Beginner’s Guide to SEO
• Google Search Console – Introduction to Sitemaps
• Screaming Frog – SEO Spider Tool
• Yoast SEO Plugin for WordPress
• XML Sitemap Generator