XML Sitemap Generator

Sitemaps provide search engines with an important means of discovering pages on your website that might otherwise go undetected. Generating them manually is time consuming; however, there are tools available that automate this process.

The XML Sitemap Generator is one such free, open-source tool. Utilizing Screaming Frog for crawling purposes, this free and open-source utility creates an XML sitemap file for you website.

Getting Started

XML Sitemap Generator is a free tool that makes creating website maps easier for search engines and more visitors. By organizing content into sitemaps, search engines are more easily able to crawl and understand them; leading to increased visibility in search results as well as increased visitor numbers on your website.

Start using XML Sitemap Generator by gathering a list of indexable URLs on your website using Screaming Frog or manually entering them into the tool. Next, filter this list so only HTML and Indexable links appear within it for inclusion in your sitemap.

Once your sitemap is created, the next step should be configuring its settings. This includes choosing whether or not an index page should be included as well as how many URLs will be listed per sitemap. Furthermore, images must also be considered when adding this step if applicable and their number included within your XML sitemap.

As part of your basic settings, it is also necessary to decide how often a sitemap should be generated and submitted to Google. As a best practice, weekly submission is recommended; however, daily or more frequent generation can also be an option if desired.

Generate a Sitemap

Website builders usually make it simple to generate an HTML sitemap and make it available to search engines automatically, while third-party tools allow for an XML version that provides more flexibility with regards to images, video and news content as well as automatically updating URLs in your sitemap on a set frequency basis.

The lastmod attribute in an XML sitemap acts as a reminder to search engines that the file needs to be crawled more frequently; however, keep in mind that Google will typically still crawl the URL regardless of your hints in an XML sitemap.

Once your XML sitemap is ready to upload to the public_html folder of your web hosting account, either via its hosting control panel or FTP client. After uploading, it is wise to test it after uploading to ensure all essential pages have been included; any missing pages should be added back in. Furthermore, testing with tools like sitemap validators ensures it processes properly and conforms to XML sitemap standards.

Submitting a Sitemap to Google

XML Sitemaps help search engines index pages on your website they might otherwise miss or index improperly, while also showing when these pages were updated or revised. Without a sitemap, search engines would rely on hyperlinks between pages to discover new or updated content which can take much more time - or lead them completely off course altogether.

AIOSEO provides an XML Sitemap Generator which syncs automatically with Google Search Console so your XML sitemap is submitted and crawled by search engines.

This tool can be customized to generate sitemap files based on unique numbers of URLs, as well as compress the XML Sitemap post-generation for space savings on server disk space. Furthermore, you can include search engines' lastmod date in each XML Sitemaps that tell them when each page was last modified - however this does not guarantee it will be used when ranking or indexing pages by Google.

Once your XML sitemap has been setup and submitted to Google Search Console, you can check its status in the Sitemaps report by searching for it on the left-hand sidebar. Google should take several days to process and display its results if it takes longer - in which case, double-check that its format is accurate as well as what may be preventing its processing.

Troubleshooting

Sitemap issues are relatively frequent but usually straightforward to solve. Most issues stem from plugin conflicts, server settings changes or broken WordPress structures which are all avoidable.

Check your XML sitemap for structural errors, such as missing tags and coding mistakes, using an online validator such as W3Schools to detect specific formatting issues. Correct any mistakes found and submit to Google Search Console again for approval.

Make sure your XML sitemap file satisfies Google's XML protocol requirements, such as using urlset> tags and proper nesting. In addition, limit its size to 50 MB or less.

Make sure your XML sitemap includes all your web pages by using Semrush's Site Audit to assess it and correct any URLs that are either missing or outdated.

Check that your sitemap does not contain any 404 errors by deleting old pages or setting up a 301 redirect for them. Also avoid submitting sitemaps with too many URLs or an excessive amount of data as Google might view this as invalid and reject it altogether.

Make sure your XML sitemap file is not being cached by your webserver as this could create issues for Google reading the file. Many caching plugins automatically exclude XML files from being cached; if not, some may still cache them causing issues with your sitemap. To rectify this problem, disable your caching plugin and revalidate XML sitemap to fix.