Frequently Asked Questions
What is an XML sitemap and why do I need one?
An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your website, helping search engines like Google and Bing discover and crawl your content more efficiently. Without a sitemap, search engines may miss pages — especially new content, deep pages, or content with few internal links. A sitemap also lets you specify each page's priority and how often it changes, giving crawlers useful signals.
How do I add a sitemap to Google Search Console?
After generating your sitemap.xml, upload it to your website's root directory so it's accessible at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Then open Google Search Console, go to Indexing → Sitemaps, enter "sitemap.xml" in the field, and click Submit. Google will begin processing your sitemap within 24-48 hours.
What should I set for priority and change frequency?
Priority ranges from 0.0 to 1.0 and is relative — it only tells Google the importance of pages on your own site. Set 1.0 for your homepage and key landing pages, 0.8 for category/blog index pages, and 0.6 for individual blog posts. Change frequency tells crawlers how often content changes: use "daily" for frequently updated pages, "weekly" for blog posts, and "monthly" for static pages. Note: Google may not strictly follow these hints.
How many URLs can an XML sitemap contain?
A single XML sitemap can contain up to 50,000 URLs and must be no larger than 50MB (uncompressed). If your site has more than 50,000 pages, you'll need to split your sitemap into multiple files and create a sitemap index file that references them all. Most SaaS sites comfortably fit within a single sitemap.
Should I include every page in my sitemap?
No. Only include pages you want Google to index. Exclude: pages with noindex meta tags, duplicate content, thin pages, admin/login pages, tag/archive pages with little unique content, and pages behind authentication. Including low-quality pages can dilute your sitemap's value and waste crawl budget. Quality over quantity.
How do I reference my sitemap in robots.txt?
Add a Sitemap directive to your robots.txt file: Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. This tells all search engine crawlers where to find your sitemap automatically, without needing to submit it manually to each search engine.