Typically, to create a sitemap.xml, one of the following options is used: online services, CMS modules, specialized programs, or manually. Below we will look at each of the tools in detail.

How to create a sitemap online

There are a lot of services on the Internet that allow you to create a sitemap for search robots. Here are the most popular ones:

These services work great and perform their functions. However, as a rule, they have a limit on the number of pages taken into account (usually 500 pieces). In addition, if the site has poor navigation and some documents are quite difficult for parcels to reach, then most likely these pages will not be included in the sitemap.xml.

How to make sitemap.xml using CMS add-ons

Most popular administration systems have add-ons that allow them to create sitemaps automatically or manually. This is the most convenient way to work with a site map for large resources, with new materials constantly published. As practice shows, you can find several suitable add-ons; you just have to choose the one that best suits your goals.

For example, for WordPress such a plugin is Google XML Sitemaps, and for Joomla it is the Xmap component. In addition, on many engines the ability to create a sitemap file is present in the original configuration (for example, 1c-Bitrix or DataLife Engine).

How to make a sitemap using Xenu

Xenu is one of the most popular software products created for SEO specialists. This program can not only create a sitemap for a website, it has a lot of useful functions - checking for broken links, identifying redirects and much more.

It should be noted that Xenu is not the only program that allows you to create a sitemap.

How to create a sitemap for a website manually

The most labor-intensive, but at the same time reliable method is manually. It is used when other options are not suitable. This could be, for example, if there are too many unnecessary pages in the sitemap, or a site with poor navigation that does not use a CMS.

After you create the sitemap.xml, be sure to check the resulting file. This can be done using the service in the Yandex webmaster panel, which is located at

Create sitemap.xml

Page limit: 1200
Price: For free!
An approach: Professional!

The main purpose of sitemap.xml is to tell search engines which pages need to be indexed first. Some people are not aware of this role of the site map, while others simply neglect it and do not attach any special importance to it. The file, which has a more common name, is considered an important tool, one might say, the main one, in order to indicate to search engines which resource pages require mandatory indexing, although visitors to your project will not see the file itself.

A sitemap contains important information that is included in it, for which a special syntax is used. This lists the pages for search engines, and also indicates what their degree of importance, how often and when they were last updated. All this is incomprehensible and is not needed either by visitors or by the site owner. This is intended for search engines only.

Without this file, or if it is filled out incorrectly, the site owner risks that his resource may be damaged or the site will not be able to reveal all its capabilities. Pages that are important may not be indexed for a long time, and this is reflected in site visits and, accordingly, in its ranking. This can be confirmed by experts who know the statistics of many projects whose creators neglected sitemap.xml. One revealing and interesting study identified the most common reasons why projects are moving very slowly. If the sitemap, which has an xml extension, is not in the required format or is simply missing, the reason for slow progress is ranked second out of ten reasons after poor quality content. These facts can convince you of the importance of the card more than mere words.

To be sure that the project is correctly indexed by search engines, creating a sitemap file is not enough. You can have it, but search engines may not see it. Search engines need to know about its existence. To do this, you need to create it correctly and select exactly those pages that are considered the most important. To search correctly, you need to make certain settings that will allow you not to include all the material on the site in the search, so as not to slow down the robot.

A tool can help with this. In addition to the fact that this tool will help in creating a map, it will notify search engines about the appearance of new material, thereby making it clear that they need indexing as soon as possible. To hide the map from prying eyes, you can even change its name using the tool.

You can indicate where sitemap.xml is located to search engines using two methods. In the directive, without omitting anything, specify the full path to the file.

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:

The sitemap.xml file, just like a regular site map, is a set of pages formatted in XML tags. Using this file, search engines understand which pages of your site should be indexed first.

Sitemap in XML format:

Each option has its pros and cons. The key advantage of a sitemap in XML format is that it eliminates the possibility of blurring the static weight of pages within the site.

In this article I will tell you how to create a correct Sitemap.xml file.

If you already know everything about creating a Sitemap, go straight to the last chapter, which is called “Tricks”.

1. Sitemap.xml file directives

There are 3 mandatory directives that must be filled in in any case, these are tags:

And also 3 optional tags:

Here is a reminder on decoding each tag from the official website http://www.sitemaps.org/ru/protocol.html:

Save this reminder. It will definitely be useful to you at first. It is worth noting another advantage of an XML sitemap - it is flexible. Flexibility lies in the combination of different optional directives.

Now that you have clarity on what an XML sitemap is and you know the basic directives of this file, you can move on to compiling it.

2. Compiling the sitemap.xml file

There are 3 ways to create a sitemap:

• Manually;
• Automatically, using special services;
• Automatically, using ready-made solutions in the form of plugins for CMS, etc.

The process for preparing a sitemap is as follows:

• We create a site map using one of the methods listed above;
• We check for validity using search engine services (https://webmaster.yandex.ru/sitemaptest.xml);
• We place the file on the website;
• We indicate the path to the site map for search robots in the robots.txt file (By the way, there is a separate article about that);
• We indicate the Sitemap in the Yandex and Google webmaster panels.

So how do you create a sitemap file?

Let's look at an example of compiling a file manually. If you want to add 5 pages of your site to the sitemap:

This is what the sitemap should look like in XML format:

The above code indicates to the search engine that the page is http://site.ru/

last modified January 1, 2005. Updated once a month. And the priority of this page is 0.8 (the maximum possible is 1).

The functionality of highlighting paired tags is especially convenient.

Services for generating Sitemap

If your site has a lot of useful pages and you don’t want to waste time compiling a file manually, then the following services will help you:

There are many such services. I'm using https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/.

Let me briefly explain all the settings:

Google search engine recommends using https://code.google.com/archive/p/sitemap-generators/wikis/SitemapGenerators.wiki

Plugins for CMS

There are a huge number of plugins and ready-made solutions for website management systems. For example:

Validity

After creating a sitemap, you need to check it for errors. To check, use the service https://webmaster.yandex.ru/sitemaptest.xml

After successful verification, we upload our file to the site.

File location

Unlike the robots.txt file, the sitemap.xml file can be located anywhere on your site. For example, in the root folder of the site the file will be available at the following address:

If you placed the file in the /files/ folder, it will be available at this address:

After successfully downloading a file, be sure to tell search robots how to find this file. This is done very simply. In the robots.txt() file in the Sitemap directive, write the full address to the file. For example, a robots.txt file might look like this:

Important! Unlike robots.txt, there can be several Sitemap files. In this case, you must indicate the full address to all Sitemap files in robots and webmasters.

Search Console and Yandex.Webmaster panel

The last stage remains. Specify the path to the site map in the webmaster panels of search engines.

• Setting up indexing
• Sitemaps
• "Check" and "Add"

There are limitations to note in the XML sitemap:

• You can specify a maximum of 50,000 URLs in one file
• The file weight is no more than 10 megabytes (search engines do not index documents larger than 10 megabytes). If necessary, the file can be compressed using the .gzip archiver.
• File encoding is UTF-8 only

At this point the main stages are completed. Follow all the simple rules described and you will not have any mistakes. The second part of the article is devoted to more detailed settings, subtleties and features of sitemap.xml; you will need this knowledge to create a professional sitemap for online stores.

3. Grouping Sitemaps

If you exceed the 50,000 URL limit, you need to use a nested structure and create a group of several Sitemaps. That is, create sitemaps within a sitemap!

For a regular website (not a large portal or online store), such a volume of pages is rare, so most SEO specialists use Sitemap grouping for convenience, for example, to group product pages or sections.

The syntax is as follows:

Definition of XML tags:

This creates a grouped site map. All other procedures are the same as described above. Don't forget to indicate the correct link to your file in the robots.txt file, in the Sitemap directive.

4. Research

At the end of 2014, I conducted a small study to analyze the effectiveness of having a sitemap.xml file on a website.

There was a problem with indexing a product group on an online store website (about 10,000 products). At the same time, nothing prevented their indexing. A site map file was compiled, consisting only of links to site products. The site map was updated automatically. In 2 months, more than 70% of URLs were included in the index database of the Yandex search engine. A large proportion of pages included in the index are pages from the site map. I would like to note that during this period no other measures were taken to speed up the indexing of the site (for example, adding links).

Here are the results themselves:

Conclusion: The sitemap still affects the indexing of your site. It is necessary to regularly update and update this file.

5. Chips

To prevent this article from becoming boring for experienced SEO specialists, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the following “tricks”.

Picture sitemap

To attract additional traffic from search engines (perhaps not entirely conversion traffic), you can create an additional Sitemap for images.

The syntax for an image sitemap looks like this:

Reminder on XML tags:

Life hack for those who finished reading

Many SEO specialists generate Sitemap files once at the start of a project. Then they forget about the site map. The pages were indexed - good. No - but what can you do?! They generally forget to add new pages to the sitemap.

During my research, I found that the most convenient way to solve this problem is a separate sitemap.xml file, which will only contain those pages of the site that have not yet been indexed.

And this is what allowed more than 70% of new URLs to be included in the Yandex index.

Enter site name

Choose the map type - xml or html, priority, frequency of changes and included site pages - as a result you will receive a valid site map file.

XML sitemap generator

You can create a Sitemap online completely free of charge using the special Saitreport service. A site map is a necessary condition for its promotion. With its help, information about the structure of the resource is transmitted to search engines.

The lack of a sitemap makes it difficult to promote it. Most search engines may not notice important documents for a long time. Therefore, to index pages, it is necessary to correctly generate and place a site map.

The Saitreport online service allows you to generate an XML map and makes it possible to create a Sitemap for website promotion. This file will allow you to select the priority of page indexing, the frequency of updates and the type of documents included.

How to create a sitemap?

To generate a sitemap, fill in all the necessary fields on the service website yourself: home page address, date and frequency of updates, priority and number of pages. Run the tool and wait for the Sitemap generation to finish.

The map generator will analyze the site and generate a text file Sitemap.xml, which you need to add to the root yourself. Using a sitemap provides the following benefits:

• site pages will be added to the search;
• search engines will identify the site much faster;
• The search match level will increase.

When using the Saitreport service, you can create an XML map and take advantage of additional functionality by setting parameters.