What is XML Sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a file that helps search engines like Google understand which pages on your website should be indexed for search results.

It also includes extra details about each page, such as:

• The last time the page was updated
• How often the page gets updated
• How important the page is compared to others on the site

This helps search engines explore your website more efficiently and match your pages to relevant searches. That’s why XML sitemaps play a big role in improving your website’s SEO.

But what does an XML sitemap look like? An XML sitemap, also called a sitemap.xml file, looks like this:

An XML sitemap gets its name because it’s created using Extensible Markup Language (XML).

Here’s a quick look at the main tags used:

• <urlset>: Wraps around all the tags in the sitemap.
• <url>: Wraps around the details for each page.
• <loc>: Shows the full URL of a page.
• <lastmod>: (Optional) Indicates when the page was last updated.

These tags help search engines understand and index your website better.

Webmasters can create separate sitemaps for images, videos, and news. This helps search engines better understand these types of content.

If you have multiple sitemaps, you’ll need a sitemap index. It’s like a directory that organizes all your sitemaps in one place.

Why are XML Sitemaps Important for SEO?

An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the important URLs of a website, serving as a roadmap for search engines to discover and index content efficiently. Here is why XML sitemaps are important for SEO:

1. Enhanced Crawl Efficiency

Managing search engine indexing for websites with thousands of pages can be difficult. Some pages may be deeply hidden in the site’s structure or lack enough links to lead search engines to them. 

A detailed list of URLs in an XML sitemap helps search engines locate and understand all important pages, improving the site’s overall visibility in search results.

On top of that breaking XML sitemaps into sections, like categories for products, blog posts, or regions, simplifies crawling. This method helps search engines focus on specific areas of the site more effectively. For large websites, this ensures even the most important pages are easily accessible.

2. Improved Indexation of New Content

When you update existing pages or add new ones to your website, it’s important that search engines like Google find these changes quickly. Sitemaps play a key role by listing all the pages on your site and showing when they were last updated. This ensures search engines are alerted to new or modified content and can index it faster, improving how quickly your updates show up in search results.

This is especially helpful for websites that publish content frequently, such as blogs or news platforms. If a sitemap isn’t used, search engines may take longer to discover updates, delaying their appearance online. 

Keeping your sitemap updated allows search engines to crawl your site efficiently, ensuring your latest content reaches your audience on time.

3. Support for Rich Media and Multilingual Content

Special sitemaps for images and videos help search engines understand rich media content better. They include details like file locations and metadata, making it easier for search engines to index and show this content in search results. 

This approach increases the chances of your images and videos appearing in searches, improving visibility and traffic.

For websites in multiple languages or targeting different regions, hreflang tags in sitemaps guide search engines to serve the right version of your site. These tags help connect each page with its language or regional variation, ensuring users find the content most relevant to them.

4. Indication of Content Updates

The <lastmod> tag in an XML sitemap indicates the last time a webpage was updated. This information helps search engines determine how often to revisit your site. When the <lastmod> tag accurately reflects the actual modification date of a page, search engines can prioritize crawling new or updated content, ensuring that users see the most current information in search results. 

However, if the <lastmod> dates are incorrect or not updated—such as being set to the current date regardless of actual content changes—search engines may disregard this information. This can lead to inefficient crawling, with search engines potentially missing important updates or wasting resources on unchanged pages. 

Therefore, it's crucial to ensure that the <lastmod> tag is consistently and accurately maintained to reflect genuine content modifications. 

Advanced XML Sitemap Strategies

Implementing advanced XML sitemap strategies is crucial for enhancing the SEO performance of complex websites. Below are key approaches to consider:

1. Create Dynamic XML Sitemaps

Dynamic sitemaps are files that update automatically whenever new content is added or existing content changes. Unlike static sitemaps, they don’t need manual updates, making them more efficient. 

These sitemaps help search engines quickly find the latest changes on a website. This is especially useful for websites that frequently update content, like blogs or news platforms, because it ensures search engines always know about the newest pages.

Imagine a news website that publishes multiple articles daily using a platform like WordPress. When a dynamic sitemap is in place, it updates instantly every time an article is posted or modified. This alerts search engines to the fresh content, helping it appear in search results faster. For websites with regular updates, this process ensures new pages don’t go unnoticed.

To use dynamic sitemaps, tools or plugins built into platforms like WordPress can handle the updates. Developers can also create scripts for custom websites that automatically generate sitemaps based on content changes. 

2. Don’t Worry Too Much About Priority Settings

When creating an XML sitemap, you might notice an option to assign priority settings to different pages, indicating their importance relative to each other. However, it's important to understand that search engines like Google don't consider these priority settings when deciding which pages to crawl or index. 

Back in 2017, Google's Gary Illyes tweeted that Googlebot ignores priority settings while crawling. 

This means that assigning higher priority values to certain pages won't influence how Googlebot treats them.

Given this, it's more effective to focus on other aspects of your sitemap and overall SEO strategy. Ensuring your sitemap is accurate, up-to-date, and free of errors will have a more significant impact on your site's visibility. 

On top of it, concentrating on high-quality content, proper use of meta tags, and a well-structured internal linking system will better support your SEO efforts than adjusting priority settings in your XML sitemap.

3. Prioritize High-Quality Pages

Search engines care about the overall quality of your website when deciding how to rank it. 

If your XML sitemap includes a lot of low-quality pages—like thin content, duplicate pages, or pages not meant for users (e.g., login screens)—it can signal to search engines that your website might not provide a great experience for visitors. This could hurt your rankings.

Instead, focus your sitemap on highlighting the best parts of your site. These should be:

• Well-optimized pages with great structure.
• Rich in content, including visuals like images and videos.
• Unique and valuable to users.
• Encouraging user interaction, like comments and reviews.

By carefully curating the pages in your sitemap, you guide search engines to your most important and valuable content, improving your site's visibility and ranking potential.

4. Remove Low-Quality or Duplicate Pages

Keeping your XML sitemap tidy is super important for improving your website's SEO. Leave out pages that don’t add much value, like login screens, registration forms, error pages (404, 500), printer-friendly versions, thank-you pages, product sorting options, empty search results, and user account pages.

Include only the pages you want Googlebot to crawl, index, and rank—these are your "money pages," the ones that generate value or revenue for your site. Focus on essential URLs like:

• Main product pages
• Category pages
• Key content pages
• Popular blog posts

For big websites, dynamic sitemaps are a lifesaver. They automatically exclude unnecessary pages and update regularly, which is perfect for e-commerce sites with changing products or news sites with frequent updates.

Use Google Search Console to audit your sitemap often. This helps you spot and remove problematic URLs, ensuring search engines focus on the most important pages. A clean, accurate sitemap improves crawl efficiency and highlights the pages that matter most to your site’s success. Keep it updated regularly.

5. Incorporate Hreflang Tags Within Your Sitemap

If your website has content in multiple languages or targets different regions, it's important to help search engines show the right version to the right audience. The hreflang attribute makes this possible by specifying the language and region a webpage is meant for.

Adding hreflang annotations to your XML sitemap gives search engines clear instructions about language-specific versions of your pages. This method works well for large websites, as it organizes language and regional URLs in one place, ensuring users see content tailored to their preferences.

To use hreflang in your XML sitemap, specific tags need to be added for each language version of a page. For instance, if there is an English page at https://example.com/en/ and a French page at https://example.com/fr/, the sitemap entry would look like this:

This setup helps search engines understand how these pages relate, ensuring users see the version that matches their language or location.

Using hreflang annotations in your XML sitemap improves the user experience by making content more relevant to visitors. It keeps users engaged because they are more likely to stay on pages in their preferred language. This also reduces bounce rates and avoids duplicate content issues. Search engines recognize that similar pages in different languages serve different audiences, which boosts your website's SEO performance.

6. Exclude 'Noindex' URLs

Adding URLs with a noindex tag to your XML sitemap can confuse search engines. The noindex tag tells search engines not to include certain pages in their results, but having those same pages in your sitemap suggests they are important. This mixed message can waste search engines’ time on pages you don’t want to show up in search results. 

To avoid this, it’s better to leave out noindex URLs from your sitemap. This way, search engines can focus on crawling and indexing the pages that really matter.

Regarding crawl budget, it's important to understand how noindex URLs impact it. Crawl budget refers to the number of pages a search engine allocates to crawl on your site within a specific timeframe. When search engines encounter noindex tags, they still need to crawl these pages to process the directive, which can consume part of your crawl budget.

However, Google has explained that using noindex doesn’t harm your crawl budget. The noindex tag simply keeps certain pages out of search results without affecting how efficiently search engines crawl your site.

To illustrate the effect of including or excluding noindex URLs in your XML sitemap on crawl budget, consider the following comparison:

Therefore, excluding noindex URLs from your XML sitemap allows search engines to use their crawling resources more efficiently. This helps them focus on the most important pages of your site, ensuring those are indexed first.

7. Utilize Sitemap Index Files

When websites have a large number of pages, managing all the URLs in one XML sitemap can be challenging. Each sitemap has a limit of 50,000 URLs or 50MB when uncompressed. 

To overcome this, websites can use multiple sitemaps, splitting URLs into categories like products, blogs, or services. This helps keep each sitemap manageable and ensures that all parts of the site are properly indexed.

A sitemap index file can be used to organize these multiple sitemaps. It works like a directory, listing the locations of all the individual sitemaps instead of web pages. Submitting this index file to search engines allows them to find and crawl all the listed sitemaps in one go. This simplifies the process and ensures efficient indexing.

Using a sitemap index file makes it easier for search engines to access and understand the structure of large websites. It ensures every section of the site is reachable, improving its chances of being fully indexed. This is especially helpful for large or complex websites aiming for better search engine visibility.

8. Create Specialized Sitemaps for Media Content

Creating specialized sitemaps for media content like images and videos helps improve your website’s presence in search results. These sitemaps share detailed information about your media files with search engines, such as titles, descriptions, and file locations. This extra information makes it easier for search engines to understand and index your content, increasing the chances of it showing up in relevant searches.

An image sitemap can include specific details, like the subject of the image or licensing information. This makes your images more likely to appear in image search results. 

Similarly, a video sitemap can provide details like video length, category, or age restrictions, ensuring your videos are properly indexed and easier to find.

Specialized sitemaps are especially useful for media-heavy websites, such as photo galleries, video blogs, or online stores with many product images. They make it simple for search engines to find and display your media content, helping you attract more visitors through better search visibility.

9. Isolate Indexation Problems

Google Search Console can be frustrating when it doesn’t index all your pages because it doesn’t clearly identify the problematic ones. For instance, if you submit 20,000 pages but only 15,000 are indexed, you’re left guessing which 5,000 pages have issues.

This is a common challenge for large e-commerce sites with many similar product pages. SEO expert Michael Cottam suggests splitting product pages into separate XML sitemaps and testing each group. This approach helps identify patterns, like whether pages without product images or unique content are being skipped by Google.

Once you pinpoint the issues, you can either fix the problems or mark those pages as “noindex” to avoid hurting your site’s overall quality. 

Thankfully, in 2018, Google Search Console improved its Index Coverage feature, making it easier to see which pages aren’t indexed and why.

10. Optimize Sitemap File Size

Managing the size of your XML sitemaps is essential for optimal website performance and efficient search engine crawling. While Google and Bing have increased the maximum accepted sitemap file size to 50 MB and up to 50,000 URLs per sitemap, it's still advisable to keep your sitemaps as concise as possible. Smaller sitemaps reduce the load on your server and facilitate quicker processing by search engines.

For websites exceeding these limits, such as an online store with 200,000 pages, it's necessary to divide your content into multiple sitemaps. In this scenario, you would create five separate sitemaps, each containing up to 50,000 URLs, to accommodate all your pages without surpassing the specified limits. This approach ensures that search engines can effectively crawl and index your entire site without being hindered by oversized sitemaps.

To manage multiple sitemaps efficiently, you can utilize a sitemap index file, which acts as a directory for your individual sitemaps. This index file references each sitemap, allowing you to submit a single file to search engines like Google. 

Once you organize your sitemaps in this manner, you can streamline the submission process and help search engines understand the structure of your website more effectively.

11. Automate Sitemap Generation

Automating XML sitemap generation is another smart way to keep your website's structure updated without manual effort. Tools and plugins can create and refresh your sitemaps automatically as you add or remove content. 

For example, WordPress plugins like Yoast SEO handle this process seamlessly, ensuring search engines are always aware of new or modified pages. This ensures your site is indexed accurately and efficiently.

Using automated tools also minimizes the chances of mistakes and saves time. Many of these tools let you customize settings, like choosing which pages to include or how often updates should happen. 

With an always-updated sitemap, search engines can crawl your site better, boosting your SEO performance.

12. Don’t Unnecessarily Create a Sitemap

Not all websites actually need a sitemap. Google can usually find and index your pages quite well on its own.

As John Mueller explains, sitemaps don’t offer the same SEO benefits to everyone. For example, if your website is a simple one-pager or a rarely updated organization site, you probably don’t need a sitemap.

However, if you regularly publish new content and want it indexed quickly, or if you have a large site with thousands of pages, like an e-commerce site, a sitemap is very useful. It helps you share important information directly with Google.

Final Thoughts

XML sitemaps play a big role in helping search engines understand your website, especially when things get complex. They make it easier to organize and share information with search engines, so your pages get noticed. When they’re done well, sitemaps can boost how well your site performs in search results. It’s all about staying clear, keeping things updated, and paying attention to what works best for your site’s needs. With thoughtful effort, you can make sure every corner of your site is easy to find and ready to stand out online.

FAQs

How do dynamic sitemaps help big e-commerce websites?

Dynamic sitemaps update automatically when new products are added or old ones are removed. This helps search engines quickly know about changes, making it easier for them to show the right products in search results.

Why are 'hreflang' tags important in sitemaps for multilingual sites?

For websites offering content in multiple languages, incorporating 'hreflang' tags within XML sitemaps helps search engines understand the language and regional targeting of each page. This practice improves the accuracy of search results for users in different linguistic and geographic markets.

Why should 'noindex' pages stay out of the sitemap?

'Noindex' pages tell search engines not to show them in search results. Including these in the sitemap sends mixed messages, so it's best to leave them out.

How does splitting sitemaps help big websites?

Segmenting sitemaps by content type (e.g., blogs, products, images) or site sections allows search engines to crawl and index each part of the website more efficiently. This targeted approach can lead to better visibility and ranking for specific content areas within large websites.

Why add 'lastmod' tags to the sitemap?

The 'lastmod' tag shows when a page was last updated. This tells search engines to focus on updated pages first, helping users get the latest information quickly.