XML Sitemap

An XML sitemapAn XML sitemap is a machine-readable file listing a website's important URLs. It helps search engines discover content more efficiently but does not replace internal linking or guarantee indexing.Open glossary entry → (Extensible Markup LanguageExtensible Markup Language (XML) is a flexible text format for storing and exchanging data in a structured way. In the SEO context, the XML sitemap is best known.Open glossary entry →) is a machine-readable file that lists a website's important URLs in a standardized format. It helps search engines with discovery (finding URLs) and supports crawlingCrawling is the process by which a search engine bot fetches a URL and downloads its content. It is the first step before a page can be indexed.Open glossary entry → of large or complex sites.

A sitemap should contain only canonical, indexableIndexing is the step in which a search engine processes crawled content and decides whether a URL is added to the search index. Only indexed pages can appear in search results.Open glossary entry → URLs with status code 200HTTP status 200 (OK) means a page was found and served successfully. Only 200 URLs should appear in the sitemap and serve as canonical targets.Open glossary entry →. It should not include noindex pages, redirectsA redirect forwards users and search engines from one URL to another. It can be permanent (301) or temporary (302) and transfers signals to the target URL.Open glossary entry →, 404 URLs, URLs blocked via robots.txt or non-canonical variants.

A sitemap is a hint, not a guarantee of indexing, and it does not replace internal linkingInternal linking refers to links that connect pages within the same website. They control how search engines and users find and thematically classify content.Open glossary entry →. It can be submitted in Google Search ConsoleGoogle Search Console (GSC) is a free Google tool that shows how a website performs in organic search – with data on impressions, clicks, click-through rate and average position, plus indexing and technical issues.Open glossary entry → and referenced in the robots.txt. The changefreq and priority fields are ignored by Google. Each sitemap may contain at most 50,000 URLs and 50 MB; larger sites use a sitemap indexA sitemap index is a parent sitemap file that references several individual XML sitemaps. It is needed when a website exceeds the size limits of a single sitemap.Open glossary entry →.