SEO ToolsLesson 334Free preview
Sitemap Generator
This lesson is part of Web Developer Tools · All levels
Summary
An XML sitemap is a file that tells a search engine a list of important URLs on a site. A sitemap generator helps to compile the file from a list of pages or site search results, complete with additional information such as the time of the last change. Sitemaps are not guaranteed to directly index pages, but they are very helpful in the crawling process.
Key points
- A sitemap contains a list of canonical URLs to be indexed
- Each URL is wrapped in a `<url>` element and its address is written in `<loc>`
- Lastmod helps crawlers know when the last page changed
- List the sitemap in robots.txt or Google Search Console
- The general limit for a single sitemap file is 50,000 URLs or 50 MB
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