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How to create and submit an XML sitemap

An XML sitemap is a list of the URLs you want search engines to find and index.

Why it matters

Sitemaps help search engines discover new and updated pages faster, especially on large sites, new sites with few links, or pages that are deep in the navigation.

Referencing the sitemap in robots.txt lets every search engine find it, not just the ones you submit it to. Important pages missing from the sitemap may be crawled less often.

How to fix it

  1. Generate a sitemap. Most CMSs and SEO plugins do this automatically; static site frameworks have sitemap plugins.
  2. Include only canonical, indexable pages that return 200. Leave out redirects, noindex pages and duplicates.
  3. Keep each sitemap under 50,000 URLs and 50 MB; use a sitemap index file to group several.
  4. Add Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml to robots.txt.
  5. Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Minimal sitemap.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-10-01</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

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