XML Sitemap Checker
Verify if your website has a properly configured XML sitemap and analyze its structure to ensure search engines can easily crawl and index your site's pages.
Checking XML sitemap and analyzing structure...
Understanding XML Sitemaps
- Purpose: Helps search engines discover and index your website's pages
- Location: Typically found at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
- Priority: Values from 0.0 to 1.0 indicating page importance
- Change Frequency: How often the page content changes
- Last Modified: When the page was last updated
- Limits: Maximum 50,000 URLs per sitemap file
XML Sitemap Examples
✅ Well-Structured XML Sitemap:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2024-01-15</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/about/</loc>
<lastmod>2024-01-10</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
</urlset>
❌ Common Issues:
<!-- Missing XML declaration -->
<urlset>
<url>
<loc>http://example.com/page</loc>
<!-- Missing lastmod, priority -->
</url>
</urlset>
🎯 Best Practices:
- Include all important pages you want indexed
- Use absolute URLs (not relative)
- Keep sitemaps under 50,000 URLs
- Update lastmod dates when content changes
- Set appropriate priority values (0.0-1.0)
- Submit sitemap to Google Search Console
- Reference sitemap in robots.txt
- Use sitemap index files for large sites
📊 Priority Guidelines:
- 1.0: Homepage and most important pages
- 0.8-0.9: Main category pages
- 0.6-0.7: Important content pages
- 0.4-0.5: Regular content pages
- 0.1-0.3: Less important pages