XML Sitemap: a complete guide to use. Detailed Guide to Sitemap Limitless Sitemap xml

If the main purpose of robots.txt is to prohibit indexing, then the sitemap sitemap.xml performs exactly the opposite tasks. It is responsible for accelerating site indexing and complete site indexing.

Sitemap.xml tells the search engine the frequency with which it needs to re-index pages. In this regard, a site map is especially important for sites with regularly updated content (news portals, etc.). In addition, sitemap.xml contains all the important pages of the site with their priority.

Requirements for a site map

A sitemap is an XML file that lists a website's URLs, combined with the metadata associated with each URL (the date it was last modified; how often it is changed; how it is prioritized at the site level) so that search engines can more intelligently scan this site.

The total number of sitemap.xml on the site should not exceed 1000, while the number of records (urls) in each should not exceed 50,000.

If you need to list more than 50,000 URLs, you should create multiple Sitemaps.

The sitemap can be compressed with a gzip archiver to reduce its size. But the size of each sitemap in expanded (unzipped) form should not exceed 10 megabytes.

The sitemap does not have to be in the form of an xml file. The protocol allows map generation in the form of syndication (RSS or Atom) or as a simple text file with a line-by-line listing of the URL. But such “site maps” either do not include all site URLs (in the case of syndication), or do not carry additional important information (the date and time of page content modification), which is precisely why site maps are used in SEO.

By providing a timestamp of the last modification You allow search engine crawlers to retrieve only a portion of the Sitemap files in the index, meaning the crawler can only retrieve those sitemap files (pages) that have been modified after a certain date. This mechanism for partial file extraction from Sitemap.xml allows you to quickly discover new URLs on large sites. In addition, this allows you to reduce the load on both the server and the search engine crawler. And they (search engines) really love the latter.

Combining a sitemap with robots.txt and robots meta tags

Sitemap.xml instructions, when used correctly, should complement each other. Exist three most important rules interactions of these instructions:

• sitemap.xml, robots.txt and robots meta tags should not contradict each other;
• all pages excluded (blocked) in robots.txt and robots meta tags must also be excluded from sitemap.xml;
• all indexable pages allowed in robots.txt must be contained in sitemap.xml

Exceptions to the three rules

There are exceptions to these three rules. And, as always, they are linked to pagination pages. Starting from the second and further pagination pages, we write noindex, follow in the robots meta tags, while in robots.txt the pagination pages are not closed from indexing.

Set the date and time of page change equal to the date and time of change of the main (first, main page) page of the catalog. In principle, we can agree with this.

Old-school optimizers advise adding only unindexed or changed pages to the sitemap.xls file. Pages that are included in the index should be removed from the sitemap. But it’s more difficult to agree with this opinion. If there is a lastmod field and it is filled out correctly, there is no need for such frills.

Main problems when using sitemap.xml

When executing, I most often encountered the following errors:

1. Inconsistency of sitemap.xml with site pages, outdated sitemap. This problem occurs when the sitemap is generated not dynamically, but sporadically, by launching some service in the CMS, or even by third-party services. In this case, a lot of dead pages appear that give a 404 error (this is if the page was physically deleted or moved to another location, or the URL address was changed). In addition, new pages are indexed much slower because they are not in the sitemap.xml.
2. The next error is incorrect sitemap.xml structure. This error occurs, as a rule, on “home-made” CMSs or when using incorrect plugins for a popular CMS. In this case, a sitemap.xml file is generated in violation of the structure described by the protocol.
3. Modification of this error is incorrect operation with the record modification date. From a protocol point of view, this is not an error, since the lastmod field is optional. From the point of view of SEO and search engines, the absence of the correct value in this field (coinciding with a direct change in the content) completely negates the significance of the entire sitemap.xml file. As mentioned above, PS will reindex those pages whose lastmod field has changed. What happens if this field changes simultaneously for all records (pages) of the site. That is, the modification date is the same for all site files. Most likely, the search engines will not pay attention to the sitemap and the site will be re-indexed in the usual way, while deep-lying pages will either not be re-indexed at all, or will take a very long time to be re-indexed. So, it is necessary either not to use the lastmod field at all (which is bad), or to set the date the last significant change to the page, for example, when the price changed or the product ran out or the description changed.
4. The next group of errors encountered are logical ones, caused by a violation of three rules about the combination of robots.txt and sitemap.xml. In this case, you can observe a page constantly entering the index and immediately leaving it. However, this will not be observed if there is a noindex meta tag and an entry in the Sitemap.xml. In this case, the crawler (robot, PS spider) that visits the page will not index it.
5. Well, the last mistake that is often found on websites is the presence of “orphaned pages”. These are pages that have a link from the sitemap, but there is not a single direct link from any of the site pages. This is often due to the fact that pages were deleted “logically” (for example, in WordPress, placed in the trash) rather than physically. This is also observed on sites where access to product cards is done using scripts and filters in a way that does not allow the results of these scripts to be indexed. There may be other reasons for the appearance of such orphan pages. All this reduces the trust of search engines in the site and is a negative ranking signal.

According to the protocol, after changing the sitemap, you can re-ping search engines. To do this, you need to create a query of the following type.

Sitemap (Sitemap.xml) is a special file in .xml format, stored in the root directory of the server. This is a file with information about the site pages that need to be indexed. Typically, a sitemap is created for Yandex and Google to notify search robots about pages that need to be included in the index. Using a sitemap, you can also check how often updates occur and which web documents are most important to index.

Video from Yandex Webmaster:

Sitemap.xml is compiled taking into account a special syntax that is understandable to search engines, where all pages to be indexed will be listed, indicating their degree of importance, the date of last update and the approximate frequency of updating.

There are two main files that any web project must have - robots.txt and sitemap.xml. If your project does not have them or they are not filled out correctly, then with a high degree of probability you are seriously harming your resource and not allowing it to reveal itself to its full potential.

Does the sitemap.xml file affect website promotion?

If you do not have a sitemap, this does not mean that search engines will not index the resource. Search robots often scan sites quite well without this and include them in the search. But sometimes glitches can occur, due to which sometimes it is not possible to find all web documents. The main reasons are:

1. Sections of the site that can only be reached by making a long chain of transitions;
2. Dynamic URLs.

Creating a sitemap.xml helps solve this problem.

Sitemap.xml affects SEO indirectly: by facilitating and speeding up the indexing of pages.

Sitemap sitemap in HTML format

Sitemaps are divided into 2 main types or formats: sitemap html and a sitemap xml file. HTML sitemap is a site page, which lists the links. Usually these are links to the most important sections and pages of the site. HTML sitemap is more designed for people rather than robots and helps you quickly navigate the main sections of the site. For a sitemap in the form of an HTML page, there are serious restrictions on the number of links on one page. If there are too many links on a page, not all links may be indexed, or the sitemap page may even be excluded from searches for having an excessive number of links, even internal links.

In order for the html sitemap to be correctly indexed and adequately perceived by visitors, you should not place more than 100 links on the page. This is more than enough to place on the page all the sections and subsections that do not fit into the main menu.

Usually, sitemap file in HTML format has a tree structure, where expanded sections and subsections are indicated. Unnecessarily bulky HTML site maps are often designed with graphic elements, CSS styles and supplemented with Java script. However, an html sitemap is of little value to search engines.

An HTML sitemap is not a full-fledged sitemap. What to do if the site has hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of pages? To do this, you need to place links to all pages in the sitemap in xml format.

Sitemap sitemap.txt

Another way to create a site map in the form of a file can be a site map in txt format:

1. http://site.ru/ 2. http://site.ru/page/ 3. http://site.ru/page1/

It's simple. The sitemap.txt file lists all the necessary links line by line. A sitemap in txt format is an “option for the lazy”. A similar sitemap xml limitation of 50,000 links works here. However, the TXT sitemap does not have the ability to indicate the last modified date and page priority.

XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap is a file in xml format, like sitemap.xml, which is usually located at the root of the site. A sitemap in xml format has many advantages over an html sitemap:

• Sitemap xml is a special sitemap format, which is determined by all popular search engines, such as Google and Yandex.
• You can specify up to 50,000 links in xml sitemap.
• In sitemap xml you can specify the relative priority and frequency of page updates.

The contents of the site map are only recommendations for the search robot. For example, if you set an annual update frequency for a website page, search robots will still visit more often. And if you set the page refresh rate to be hourly, this does not mean that robots will index the page every hour.

How to create the correct sitemap.xml

Let's look at how to make a proper xml map. The following requirements must be met:

1. The file size should be no more than 10 MB;
2. The map should contain no more than 50,000 links. In cases where there are more links, you can create several maps and include them in the main xml map;
3. The sitemap address should be entered in robots.txt;
4. Also upload the sitemap to Yandex and Google (how to add a file is described below);
5. Search engines must have access to the map. It is necessary to use special tags that let search engines understand that this is a map and not something else;
6. The sitemap must have UTF-8 encoding.

The contents of the sitemap.xml file look like:

http://site.ru/ 2015-10-18T18:54:13+04:00 always 1.0 http://site.ru/category/ 2015-10-18T18:57:09+04:00 hourly 0.8 http://site.ru/page/ 2015-10-18T18:59:37+04:00 daily 0.6

Where the following required tags are used:

• - parent tag, it contains all URLs;
• - a tag that contains information about a specific URL;
• https://olegshein.ru/en/- in this tag the url is indicated directly.

• - this tag contains the date the page was last modified;
• - the tag is used to indicate how often the page changes: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never;
Indicates the priority of a particular page relative to other pages on the site from 0.1 – low priority, to 1 – high priority.

Changefreq indicates the frequency of page changes:

1. Hourly – updates hourly;
2. Always – always updated;
3. Weekly – updated once a week;
4. Daily – updates occur daily;
5. Monthly – updates occur once a month;
6. Yearly – once a year;
7. Never – not updated (it is better not to use this value).

Priority tells search engines how important a page is compared to others. The priority can be set from 0.1 (low) to 1 (high).

The sitemap.xml file must contain a reference to the XML language namespace:

Xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"

If the sitemap file includes more than 50 thousand links or the size of the sitemap.xml exceeds 10 MB, it is recommended to split the sitemap into several files. In this case, in the site map you need to indicate several links to different map files.

http://site.ru/sitemaps/sitemap01.xml 2015-10-18T18:54:13+04:00 http://site.ru/sitemaps/sitemap02.xml 2015-10-18T18:54:13+04:00

Tags that are already familiar to us are used here And , as well as required tags:

• - parent tag, which contains the addresses of all site maps;
• - a tag that contains parameters for each sitemap.

How to create Sitemap.xml

Creating a site map an important process in which it is necessary to clearly indicate which pages of the site need to be indexed and how best to index them. Depending on what type of site map we are talking about, different ways to create a site map. There is no point in discussing how to create an html sitemap separately. Let's look at how to make a map in xml file format. There are several basic ways to create a sitemap, but what they all have in common is where the sitemap is located and how the sitemap is determined by search engines.

As already written above - The sitemap file is located at the root of the site. Search engines are able to independently detect a sitemap file. But there are several ways to provide a direct link to the sitemap file(s) for faster discovery by search engines. The easiest way to specify the location of the sitemap file is to directly indicate a link or several links to sitemap files in the webmaster tools from Yandex and Google. There you can check sitemap, conduct analysis of the site map for correctness, correspondence of which pages from the site map are found by the search engine and how many of them are indexed.

The second way to point search engines to the location of a sitemap file is with the Sitemap directive in the robots.txt file.

Sitemap: http://site.ru/sitemap.xml

You can specify several sitemap files in robots.txt, after which it will automatically be added to webmaster tools. We've looked at how to find a sitemap, now let's move on to how to create a sitemap.

Basic ways to create a sitemap

1. Generating a site map by the site management system, if the CMS has such a built-in capability.
2. Download site map from a third-party online service. There are many online sitemap generators with different capabilities and limitations. Probably one of the most famous online sitemap generators is Sitemap Generator. It has quite a lot of functionality and will allow you to generate a sitemap for 1500 pages for free, which is quite a lot. There is also xml-sitemaps.com, which has the ability to customize sitemap parameters, but has a limit on the number of links in the sitemap.xml file of 500 pieces.
3. Download sitemap generator. Such generator programs are usually paid, but with their help you can regularly generate sitemap xml for one or several sites. Here are a couple of examples of such generator programs: SiteMap XML Dynamic SiteMap Generator, WonderWebWare SiteMap Generator.
4. Automatic creation of sitemap sitemap in Joomla (Jumla), WordPress (Wordpress), Bitrix (Bitrix), ModX.
5. Creating a sitemap manually.

Sitemap WordPress

You can create a sitemap for WordPress using the Google XML Sitemaps plugin. For it, you can make many settings that will allow you to exclude some of the materials on your site, and you can also set the expected update frequency. In addition to creating a map, the Google XML Sitemaps plugin notifies many search engines when publishing new materials on your blog, inviting them to quickly index it.

You can set the path to the sitemap file yourself in the plugin settings and you can even give it a name different from the classic sitemap.xml.

Joomla sitemap

You can create a sitemap for Joomla using the Xmap component.

Check Sitemap for broken links

In order not to deceive the search robot, sitemap.xml must be configured without errors. Therefore, after each file update, you need to check the sitemap for broken links.

Go to Yandex Webmaster - section “Tools” - “Analysis of Sitemap files”.

Select one of the file upload methods:

• copy text sitmepa.xml;
• submit sitemap URL;
• upload xml file to the service.

Checking sitemap.xml in Yandex Webmaster

Go to Google Search Console - section "Crawling" - "Sitemaps".

Analysis of Sitemap.xml from PixelPlus

Tool from pixelplus.ru - XML ​​sitemap analysis. It's simple, cool and understandable.

1. Specify the sitemap (URL) or upload an XML file.

   We choose whether to check the server response code for each URL in it.

The tool will allow you to check the correctness of the site map (*.xml file) and also find:

File validity errors.

Those URLs that return a response code other than 200 OK.

Other errors (pointing to a URL from another domain, excessive file size or number of URLs in it, and so on).

Let us remind you that the number of valid URLs in one file is 50,000, and the file size should not exceed 10 MB.

If errors are found (this happens often), the service will tell you which URLs give an incorrect response (deleted, unnecessary, and so on).

Sitemap.xml is an important tool

A site map is one of the important tools for SEO website promotion. It doesn't matter how the sitemap is created. It is important which links will be listed in the sitemap and how often it will be updated. Sometimes, everything is uploaded to the sitemap, even those links that are prohibited in robots.txt or non-canonical links. And the sitemap is updated once a month or less. Such an attitude towards the site map can not only make it useless, but even worse - confuse the search robot, which will negatively affect the indexing and position of the site in the search.

Create a sitemap for your resource. But be careful and think carefully about what to upload to the sitemap and what not.

In this guide we will cover the following questions:

What is a Sitemap?

This is a file that contains a list of links to all important pages of the site. That is, this document directs search engines to the main content on the site.

Why do you need a site map?

A sitemap is needed if the site has problems with indexing caused by:
1) a large number of pages;
2) lack of links (internal or external) to pages;
3) deep nesting on the site (confusing structure).

HTML vs XML sitemap

Sitemaps come in the following types:

• HTML;

The simplest explanation of the difference between these formats is that an XML map is primarily intended for search engines, while HTML is primarily intended for users.

HTML map– This is just a general overview of the site, containing only the information and pages that users need to see. If you are on a website and are looking for a specific section, you can easily find it when you go to Sitemap HTML. While this type of sitemap is user-focused, it can also help your search engine rankings. This is one evidence that you care about the user experience of the site.

When creating an HTML sitemap, it is important to consider:

1. Structured content.

The site map should be clear and convenient for the user to understand. It is desirable that it include sections, categories, subcategories, etc.

2. Link anchors.

Protocol XML cards The site is intended for search robots. The XML file contains information about when the URL was last updated, how important it is, and how often changes occur.

Typically a Sitemap consists of the following XML tags:

Required:
– defines the protocol standard and encapsulates this file.
– contains information about the URL (is the parent tag).
– contains an absolute URL.

Optional:
– indicates the date the file was last modified.
– indicates the frequency of file changes.
– indicates the importance of the document on the site. Value range: 0.1 to 1.0 (default 0.5).

Don't set each URL to change the file too often and have the highest priority. If the frequency and priority tags do not reflect reality, it is likely that search engines will be more inclined to ignore the entire XML map.

Other Sitemap Formats

In addition to the above sitemaps, search engines also support the following formats:

For Google:
— RSS, mRSS and Atom 1.0;
RSS/Atom feeds should contain the latest updates to your site. They are usually small and updated frequently (which is a plus).
— Google Sites.
For sites created on the Google Sites platform, a Sitemap is created automatically and no changes can be made.

For Google and Yandex:
— text format (TXT).
The file must be UTF-8 encoded and contain URLs only.

Google and Yandex requirements for Sitemap files

1. Use UTF-8 encoding.
2. The maximum number of URLs is 50,000.
3. Links in the sitemap must be on the same domain as the file.

4. If the file is too large, split it into several and list them in the Sitemap index file.
5. The server response when accessing a file should be 200 OK.
6. Specify only canonical page addresses (without GET parameters and session identifiers).

1. Maximum size – 10 MB.
2. Supports Cyrillic URLs.

1. Maximum size – 50 MB.
2. Supports only numbers and Latin letters.

Common mistake: to reduce bandwidth requirements, use the gzip archiver. The sitemap size should be 50 MB (10 MB) before compression, not after.

Tip: Russian domain names can be converted using Punycode.

How to Create an XML Sitemap

1. To create a sitemap, you first need to determine the canonical addresses that will be added to the file.

2. Decide what file format you will use.

3. You can create the file manually or using the Sitemap generator.

Google in its help has prepared a list of online and desktop, paid and free sitemap generators. You can view the entire list by following the link.

Generating a Sitemap is easier than it seems. Let's look at how to generate a sitemap using the Majento desktop application as an example:

1. Parse the site.

2. Go to the “Sites” => “Generate Sitemap” section.

3. Save in the format we need.

4. The site map is ready.

Of the online XML sitemap generators, XML Sitemap Generator deserves attention.

The advanced capabilities of this server allow you to set certain XML tags and include/exclude the necessary documents.

You can also exclude unnecessary pages using regular expressions.

Google supports extended syntax for images. To do this, you can create a separate sitemap for images or add syntax to an existing one. Using rich syntax in a Sitemap provides the search engine with additional information about the images on the site. It can also help Google discover and index images that it can't find when crawling your site.

Just like a regular sitemap, there are required and optional XML tags.

Required:
– similar to tag contains the image URL and additional information.
– Image URL.

Optional:
– caption for the image.
– the location where the photo was taken.
– name of the image.
– Image URL licenses.

Another advanced syntax that Google supports is XML video map.

Pros of adding XML tags for videos:

1) lets Google know what content is on the site;
2) makes it possible to provide a detailed description of the file;
3) will become searchable on Google Video;
4) the video splash screen will be displayed in the search results (this can increase the number of transitions from the search results).

A sitemap for video files consists of the following required elements:

– contains the URL of the page on which the video is posted; if there is more than one video on one page, you do not need to create a tag each time , enough in one tag register several times for each video on the page.
– includes all information about the video.
– URL to the thumbnail image (splash screen) for the video. Recommended sizes: from 160x90 pixels to 1920x1080. Image formats: .jpg, .png, or. gif
– a title that must match the name of the page on which the video is displayed.
– video description. Must match the page meta descriptions. The maximum number of characters is 2048.

The video title and description must be escaped or packaged in a CDATA block.

All video sitemap XML tags can be found in Google Help.

Where to place a site map

We describe in more detail how to place a link to a sitemap in robots.txt in our article.

Add and check Sitemap in Yandex.Webmaster

To inform the Yandex robot about the presence of a sitemap, add it to the Yandex.Webmaster panel:

1. Go to the “Indexing” – “Sitemap Files” section.

3. Click the "Add" button.

4. A list with all added files will be displayed below.

1. In the Yandex.Webmaster panel, go to the “Tools” – “Analysis of Sitemap files” section.

2. Provide a URL, upload a file, or simply add text.

3. Click the "Check" button.

Add and check the file in Google Search Console

To tell Googlebot about the presence of this file, you need to add it to the GSC panel:
1. Go to the “Crawling” – “Sitemap Files” section.
2. Click the “Add/Verify Sitemap” button.
3. Specify the file URL.
4. Click the "Submit" button.

Since this file causes difficulties for many and is a “dark forest”, certain myths arise regarding sitemaps. Let's look at some of them:

– “Including the URL in the XML Sitemap ensures that it will be indexed.”
No. It's important to note that XML Sitemaps are guidelines only. An XML sitemap does not guarantee that search engines will index the pages specified in the file.

- “If I remove a URL from the XML map, it will be removed from the index.”
No. An XML sitemap does not preclude indexing pages that are not included in the XML sitemap.

– “XML Sitemaps are difficult to create and maintain”
No. Small sites can easily create and host their own XML files manually using the examples above as a formatting guide. For larger sites and sites that change more frequently, plugins or modules available for most CMSs can automate the updating of XML files.

Conclusion

A Sitemap file is a useful tool for conveying information about the structure of a site to search robots. Use this guide to understand how a sitemap works, how it is structured, and how to generate, host, and review the file.

Which are needed for search robots. Some will say that it is not needed, because all sections are already displayed. However, the need for such a page exists if the site contains fifty pages or more. For search engines and users, it will serve as a guide to help them understand where this or that information is contained.

XML and HTML files

Since it is used not only for search robots, but also for users visiting the site, two maps are usually compiled: in XML and HTML formats.

To create a Sitemap for search robots, use an XML file. Thanks to it, robots add new ones to their search database. In the absence of a map on a multi-page site, a large number of pages may not be indexed for sometimes a very long time.

An HTML file is used to create a sitemap for users. The importance of this map lies in the fact that its convenience directly determines whether the user will find the information he is interested in or not. Therefore, such a map is created for those Internet projects in which all sections and their subsections do not fit in the main menu.

How to create a Sitemap XML

There are three ways to solve this problem:

Buying a generator for a sitemap.

Create a Sitemap using online services.

Manually writing a file.

To significantly save time, it is proposed to purchase generators. Therefore, if twenty to thirty dollars to purchase a license is a small waste of money for a webmaster, then buying it, especially for a large Internet resource, still won’t hurt, since then you won’t need to create a website manually.

For a site containing several hundred pages, online services are recommended, where in order to create a Sitemap, you only need to indicate the address of the Internet resource and download the result.

The best option is to manually create a map. To do this, you need to know tags such as url, urlset, loc, lastmod, changefreg and priority. In this case, the first three tags are considered mandatory, but the last three can be dispensed with.

Creating a Sitemap in Joomla

To create a Sitemap on a website, Joomla and Wordpress have special add-ons, like most well-known administration systems, thanks to which a sitemap is created manually or automatically. For large Internet projects that constantly update materials, this addition is very convenient.

In Joomla it is called Xmap, in Wordpress it is called Google XML Sitemaps.

Automatic sitemap creation

Free online servers help you create a Sitemap automatically if your site has no more than five hundred pages. Here's how easy it is to generate a sitemap:

Having visited one of these Internet resources, you need to find the “Generate Sitemap” item, click on the “Create” button and create a Sitemap file automatically.

Find “Site URL” and enter there the address of the site for which the map is being created.

The system may require you to enter a verification code. You must also enter it and click “Start”.

Upload the finished map to the website.

Manual way to create a map

This method is, on the one hand, the most difficult, taking up precious time, but on the other hand, it is the most reliable method, used in cases where other options are not suitable. So, for example, if there are many pages that are not particularly necessary to be included in the site map, but they automatically end up there, of course, the manual method will save the map from the “overdose” of such pages. Another reason for choosing this method is poor site navigation.

To implement manual map creation you must:

Collect pages to include in a map.

In the excel file, insert all addresses in the third column.

Insert both url and loc in the 1st and 2nd columns.

In the 4th and 5th columns, insert the closing url and loc.

Use the “link” function to connect five columns.

Create a sitemap.xml.

Add both urlset and /urlset tags to this file.

Insert a connected column between them.

The resulting file must be checked. This can be done, for example, in Yandex, in the webmaster panel.

How to create a Sitemap for Yandex and Google

After the site is created, it is added to the site. For this purpose, the file with the site map should be called Sitemap.xml and added to the root directory. To find it quickly, Google and Yandex have special tools. They are called “Webmaster Tools” (in Google) and “Yandex Webmaster” (in Yandex).

Adding a Sitemap to Google

Adding a Sitemap to Yandex

Likewise, you must first log in to Yandex Webmaster. Then go to Indexing/Sitemap files, specify the file path there and click the “Add” button.

Search robots today will only take those files that contain no more than fifty thousand URLs.

If the card exceeds ten megabytes, it is better to split it into several files. Thanks to this, the server will not be overloaded.

To create Sitemap xml correctly, if there are several files, you need to register them all in the index file, using the sitemapindex, sitemap, loc and lastmod tags.

All pages must be written either with or without the “www” prefix.

The required file encoding is UTF8.

You also need to add an indication of the language namespace in the file.

How to create a sitemap for users

Since such a map is created for users, it should be as simple and clear as possible. Despite this, it is necessary to accurately convey all the information about the structure of the site being used.

HTML maps basically have a familiar custom structure of sections and subsections highlighted in specific ways, such as CSS styles and graphical elements.

To create a Sitemap for a large Internet project, as in the case of an XML map, splitting is also recommended here. In this case, it is carried out in the form of separate tabs, eliminating the bulkiness of the map.

The functionality of the page will be enhanced by the JavaScript language, which can be used in this map, since it is created not for search engine robots, but for users.

Order for a sitemap file

It is advisable that the created file containing the Sitemap always be clean and tidy, especially if the site has a large number of pages. Since search engine robots scan sitemaps very quickly, there may simply not be enough time to view the entire file of a large Internet resource.

Therefore, if you get used to adding pages to the site map not at the bottom, but at the top, then, on the one hand, there is no doubt that the search robot will have time to view the addresses of new pages, and on the other hand, in this way it will be much easier to control all pages.

Using our sitemap generator, create XML files that can be submitted to Google, Yandex, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines to help them index your site.

Do it in three simple steps: